【推荐1】Noisy family? Loud construction right outside your window? A new flexible loudspeaker could help you rest easily. It could turn your walls into noise-canceling systems.

The new loudspeaker is about as thick as a few sheets of paper. It’s lightweight and flexible enough to stick to most surfaces to control noise much easier, notes Jinchi Han, an electrical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge.

Lots of dome-shaped (圆顶状的) microstructures are in the centre of the new speaker. Han’s team sandwiches their new material between two plastic sheets to protect the domes. “The bottom layer lifts up the small domes so that they can vibrate (震动) freely, and the upper protective layer is thicker than the domes that are secured in the middle of the layers,” he explains. “So if you touch the surface, you don’t need to worry about damaging these small structures.”

Han points out large area of the new material could make controlling noise much easier.

Each dome works as a tiny speaker. The domes can generate sound waves all together, in groups or individually. Wallpapering your bedroom with this material would create speakers all around you. Those same speakers could then dampen or cancel unwanted sound. “If you desire, you could turn any space into a quiet zone where you could sleep or study with barely any noise,” Han says. He also sees applications in cars, airplanes, apartments or wherever unwanted noise is a problem.

Large versions could be the next step for this super-thin speakers, says Lori Beckstead, a sound artist.

“The new speakers are so thin and light that they could be placed in spaces where traditional loudspeakers might have been impractical,” Beckstead adds. She notes that adding noise-canceling technology to loud spaces from restaurants to noisy industrial plants would be fantastic.

【推荐1】Most of us assume those hyper-achievers who are always able to squeeze in their workout, eat healthy foods and pick their kids up on time must have superhuman self-control. But science points to a different answer:    1     The only catch is that building good habits takes effort and insight. Thankfully, here are a few research-backed steps that can set you on the path to where you want to be.

The way you define the goal you hope to turn into a habit does matter. Goals like “meditate regularly” are too abstract, research has shown.     2    Don’t say “I’ll meditate regularly. “ Say, “I’ll meditate for 15 minutes each day. “This is actually key to habit formation, making the task easy to carry out, but it’s often overlooked.

    3    Scientists have proven that you’ll make more progress toward your goal if you decide not just what you’ll do, but when and where you’ll be cued to do it. Making this kind of plan reduces the chances you’ll forget to follow through because the when and where in your plan will serve as cues to action.

A plan like “I’ll study Spanish for 30 minutes every weekday” is OK. But a detailed, cue-based plan like “Every workday after my last meeting, I’ll spend 30 minutes studying Spanish in my office” is more likely to stick as a habit.

We’re strongly influenced by the behaviors of the people around us, evidence shows. Want to start running regularly? You’re probably better off joining an established running club than asking a few friends who aren’t yet in the habit of jogging to get in shape with you.

However, it’s important not to get too crazy - if you try to train with marathoners when you’re just hoping to work up to a 5K, it can be discouraging.

Research has shown you’ll persist longer and ultimately achieve more if you focus on finding ways to make goal pursuit fun. One excellent way is to try “temptation bundling”. Research shows that temptation bundling improves follow-through; it transforms goal pursuit into a source of pleasure, not pain.     5    

【推荐3】Do you have some habits like emotional (情绪的) eating or spending money to reduce stress?     1     Here we are coming to discuss some habit-breaking strategies (策略).

We first take an example. When you are in a movie theater with hot dogs, the movie theater is the invitation, and hot dog’s buying and eating are the behaviors.

The habit-breaking choices are: One, tell yourself “no hot dog” each time; two, avoid going to the movies at all; or three, exchange the hot dog with a new movie snack that you can afford or achieve your nutritional goals. The key to this strategy is to make sure that the new habit is similarly attractive.     2    

Not every habit-breaking strategy works for every habit. For example, maybe you want to eat a piece of oil cake in the break room when you arrive at school.     3     Maybe, you might as well try to develop a new habit of eating healthier breakfast food at the same time, instead.

    4     The only way habit-breaking works is to use the strategy repeatedly. A 2009 study of 96 people in the European Journal of Social Psychology showed that individuals took between 18 and 254 days to form a habit.

Finally, success isn’t perfection with habit breaking. Habit should be thought of as a continuum (连续体). Things become more or less habitual.     5     And you’ll know you’re making progress when you feel less influenced by the habit, not when it is gone.