【推荐1】Most adults firmly believe that as kids reach their teens, they start to take crazy risks that get them in trouble. Do teenagers simply love taking all risks much more than adults? A recent study suggests otherwise.

Scientists designed a simple experiment involving 33 teenagers and three other age groups. In the experiment, the researchers tried to distinguish between two very different kinds of risk-taking. The first they called a willingness to take known risks (when the probability of winning is clear) and the second they called a willingness to take unknown risks (when the possibility of success is uncertain).

The study offered participants the opportunity to play two kinds of games. They had the chance to win money, with one game offering a known risk and the other offering an unknown risk. On each round of the game, each participant had to choose between taking a sure $5 and known or unknown risks of winning a lot more. If on one particular round they had picked the $5 for sure choice, then they got $ 5. But if on that round they had chosen to take a risk, the rules of the game will determine whether or not they had won. If they did win, they went home with between $8 and $125. And, of course, if they lost, they went home with nothing.

What the scientists found was really quite surprising. It turned out that the average teenager was very hesitant when risks were known—more careful than college students or parents-aged adults, and about as careful as grandparent-aged adults. This means that when the risks were known, teenagers were not risky in their behavior at all. Only when the risks were unclear did teenagers choose them more often than other groups. Under those kinds of conditions, they were much more willing to take a risk than any other group.

So, what does all of this mean? The research suggests that adults should probably focus more energy on trying to educate teenagers about risks than limiting them. Teenagers who understand the risks associated with a decision are more likely to be careful in their behavior.

【推荐2】Bullying(霸凌) can take a variety of forms, from the verbal to the physical as well as indirect forms, such as being excluded from social groups. Bullying is clearly unpleasant, and can make the child experiencing it feel unworthy and depressed. In extreme cases it can even lead to suicide, though this is thankfully rare.

Until recently, not much was known about the topic, and little help was available to teachers to deal with bullying. Perhaps as a consequence, schools would often deny   the problem. „There is no bullying at this school‟ has been a common answer if asked, almost certainly untrue. Fortunately more schools are now saying: “There is not much bullying here, but when it occurs we have a clear policy for dealing with it.” Three factors are involved in this change. First is an awareness of the severity of the problem. Second, a number of resources to help tackle bullying have become available in Britain. For example, the Scottish Council for Research in Education produced a package of materials, Action Against Bullying, circulated to all schools in England and Wales as well as in Scotland. In Ireland, Guidelines on Countering Bullying Behaviour in Post-Primary Schools was published, too. Third, there is evidence that these materials work, and that schools can achieve something.

Evidence suggests that a key step is to develop a policy on bullying, saying clearly what bullying means, and giving explicit guidelines on what will be done if it occurs, what records will be kept, who will be informed and what punishments will be employed. The policy should be developed through consultation over a period of time. Pupils, parents and staff should feel they have been involved in the policy. Other actions can be taken to back up the policy. There are ways of dealing with the topic through the curriculum, using video, drama and literature. But curriculum work alone may only have short-term effects; it should be an addition to policy work. There are also ways of working with individual pupils, or in small groups. Work in the playground is important, too. One helpful step is to train lunchtime supervisors to distinguish bullying from playful fighting, and help them break up conflicts. Another possibility is to improve the playground environment, so that pupils are less likely to be led into bullying from boredom or frustration.

With these developments, schools can expect that at least the most serious kinds of bullying can largely be prevented. The more effort is put in and the wider the whole school is involved, the more substantial the results are likely to be. The reduction in bullying and the consequent improvement in pupil happiness is surely a worthwhile objective.

【推荐3】It’s time to reevaluate how women handle conflict at work. Being overworked or over-committed at home and on the job will not get you where you want to be in life. It will only slow you down and hinder(阻碍) your career goals.

Did you know women are more likely than men to feel exhausted? Nearly twice as many women than men ages 18-44 reported feeling drained of energy, according to a recent study.

This may not be surprising given that this is the age range when women have children. It’s also the age range when many women are trying to balance careers and home. One reason women may feel exhausted is that they have a hard time saying “no.” Women want to be able to do it all—volunteer for school parties or cook delicious meals—and so their answer to any request is often “Yes, I can.”

Women struggle to say “no” in the workplace for similar reasons, including the desire to be liked by their colleagues. Unfortunately, this inability to say “no” may be hurting women’s health as well as their career.

At the workplace, men use conflict as a way to position themselves, while women often avoid conflict or strive to be the peacemaker, because they don’t want to be viewed as aggressive at work. For example, there’s a problem that needs to be addressed immediately, resulting in a dispute over who should be the one to fix it. Men are more likely to face that dispute from the perspective of what benefits them most, whereas women may approach the same dispute from the perspective of what’s the easiest and quickest way to resolve the problem—even if that means doing the boring work themselves.

This difference in handling conflict could be the deciding factor on who gets promoted to a leadership position and who does not. Leaders have to be able to assign tasks and manage resources wisely. Shouldering more of the workload may not earn you that promotion. Instead, it may highlight you inability to effectively make use of what you have.

【推荐1】ARNOLD Schwarzenegger is back, once again taking on his iconic killer robot role, the T-800, in August’s new movie Terminator Genisys. While the T-800 model—even if it can be evil—has a fond place in moviegoers’ hearts, the reality of autonomous machines is no joke, according to scientists.

Autonomous weapons use artificial intelligence (AI) to choose targets without human help. They were described as “the third revolution in warfare, after gunpowder and nuclear arms” in an open letter signed by over 1,000 important technology figures in July. The list included British scientist Stephen Hawking and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. They asked governments around the world to ban autonomous weapons, warning that killer robots could start ethnic cleansings and an arms race.

“They will look like tanks. They will look like battleships. They will look like jet fighters,” UK robotics professor Noel Sharkey told CNET, a leading technology website.

But unlike these machines, which require a human hand in their action, so-called “killer robots” would have some decision-making abilities and the ability to act on their own.

“If any major military power pushes ahead with AI weapon development, a global arms race is almost inevitable,” said the letter released at the 2015 International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

The idea of an automated killing machine was made famous by Schwarzenegger’s first Terminator movie in 1984. While no red-eyed robots have been sent after human beings, the idea of AI being used as a weapon has gotten much more likely in the years ever since. The US military is already developing autonomous flying vehicles that can carry out all the steps of a strike mission without a human controlling them, according to a May report in Nature magazine.

Scientists have even painted a destructive picture of autonomous weapons falling into the hands of terrorists or warlords hoping to carry out ethnic cleansings.

“The development of full artificial intelligence could lead to the end of the human race,” Hawking said to the BBC in 2016.

Authorities are gradually waking up to the risk of robot wars. Last May, for the first time, the United Nations brought governments together to begin talks on autonomous weapons systems.

Still, a ban on autonomous weapons is “easier said than done”, commented The Guardian. The dual (双重的) uses of the AI technology—for harm and for good—is difficult to manage. This is because the exact same technology can be used in a wide range of ways, the paper said.

【推荐2】Around the world COVID-19 has messed up children’s education. They began to be shut out of classrooms. Even in countries where schools have stayed open, lessons and tests have been interrupted. Some countries pressed ahead with national exams this year. A few others, including Britain, France and Ireland, cancelled them all. They came up with new ways of awarding grades instead. The fact that big exams have proved so vulnerable to interruption has led to new questions about their usefulness. Are there better ways of measuring what children have learned?

Exams have plenty of problems. They are often unreliable; a study in Israel found that test-takers’ performance can be affected by smog. Many children find them stressful. Plenty of places run them badly. Poorly written test papers in developing countries lead to wild swings in pass rates. Countries, including Algeria and Ethiopia, have shut down the Internet at exam time to prevent cheating.

Yet most of the world’s best-performing school systems keep some kind of important tests, and for good reason. Other kinds of assessments are rarely better and many are worse. For example, if teachers are responsible for assessing their pupils, they may strengthen their own biases. Studies have caught them giving lower grades to students from ethnic minority or those who are fat. Giving up exams does not always ease pupils’ anxiety. Some would rather be tested at the end of their course than have their work constantly assessed. Coursework can waste students’ efforts by encouraging them to make slight changes to a few projects endlessly. That leaves less time for other kinds of learning.

Governments may need to adjust next year’s tests. That could mean cutting the amount of material to be tested. Exam boards may also have to increase the grades of pupils who have spent the most time out of the classroom. Many pupils have studied harder throughout this difficult year. They should have the chance to sit exams to earn the grades they deserve.