【推荐2】Some people are confident and full of wisdom while remaining true to their beliefs, which comes from self-awareness. Now we’ll share how to develop self-awareness so you can practice mindful living.

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Self-awareness is a continuous process that involves constant changes. Those with a growth mindset may be more likely to experience change more frequently. So, make it your goal to often pause and think about who you are and where you are and build toward where you’re going.

Be more of a listener

The most common mistake that a lot of us make is that we always want to be heard. But how can we better understand ourselves if we don’t take the time to listen and accept feedback from others?     2    . Listening will give you a true sense of how other people perceive your character, giving you a better understanding of who you are.

Take a 3rd-person point of view of self- awareness

When someone has made mean remarks about you, you likely feel hurt. But have you tried taking the perspective of a 3rd-party?     3    . Negative thoughts can prevent you from having a sense of self-awareness.

Treat yourself

    4    , which shifts the shape of who you essentially are. Whatever situations you are in, your goal should always be to come back to yourself. That’s why you should plan to treat yourself well for your mental and physical wellbeing. Take yourself out and enjoy your favorite meal quietly. Or sit or sleep the whole day and do nothing at all.       5    

【推荐3】A new study, led by Huijeong Jeong and Vijay Namboodiri of the University of California, San Francisco, has turned the world of neuroscience (神经科学) on its head.

It proposes a model of associative learning which suggests that researchers have got things backwards. Their suggestion, moreover, is supported by a series of experiments. The old model looks forward, associating cause with effect. The new one does the opposite. It associates effect with cause. They think that when an animal receives a reward (or punishment), it looks back through its memory to work out what might have caused this event. Looking at things this way deals with two things that have always made the old model hard to understand. Making predictions based on every single possible cue (暗示) would be somewhere between difficult and impossible. It is far simpler, when a meaningful event happens, to look backwards through other potentially meaningful events for a cause.

In practice, however, it is hard to distinguish experimentally between the two models. And that is especially true if you do not even bother to look—which, until now, people have not.

Dr. Jeong and Dr. Namboodiri have done so. They conducted 11 experiments that were designed specifically for the purpose. During these they measured, in real time, the amount of dopamine (多巴胺) being released by the nucleus accumbens, a region of the brain in which dopamine is involved in learning and addiction. All of the experiments came down in favor of the new model.

“The study is thought-inspiring and represents a stimulating new direction,” says Ilana Witten, a neuroscientist at Princeton University uninvolved with the paper.

More experiments will be needed to confirm the new findings. But if confirmation comes, it will have influences beyond neuroscience. Dr. Namboodiri thinks so, and is exploring the possibilities. Evolution has had hundreds of millions of years to better the process of learning.

So learning from nature is rarely a bad idea.

【推荐1】According to the World Economic Forum(WEF), eight million tons of plastic waste is being poured out into the oceans every year. That's the equivalent (相等物)of an entire garbage truck being dumped every three minutes, and the source of the problem—the world's cities. In Amsterdam, a simple solution has been found that could stop up to 86 percent of plastic waste ever reaching the oceans—a barrier made of bubbles (气泡).

The way the bubble barrier system works is basically that it is a tube placed diagonally (沿对角线地)on the bottom of the waterway. "The tube has a lot of tiny holes," according to Phillip Ehrhorn, Chief Technology Officer in The Great Bubble Barrier, "We pump air through it, and the air bubbles will rise towards the surface. The plastics are brought to the surface with the air bubbles and then, with the natural flow of the river, towards one side of the river." Then the other part of the bubble barrier system collects and removes the waste.

"Ship traffic is a key economic driver；we won't be able to stop that. So, we would have to find a solution which would not affect all the other existing activities and the ecosystem," Phillip added. The bubble barrier does exactly that. While it provides no block to water traffic and sea life can pass through freely, it also catches plastic waste of all sizes.

The Great Bubble Barrier is trying to work together with Amsterdam and local Non-governmental Organizations(NGOs)to evaluate what the bubble barrier system is catching so as to carry out new policies and additional measures on land. In this way, plastics entering the water could be reduced in the first place. "Our next step is a bubble barrier within Europe and we, of course, want to move to Asia because we think we can make a lot of influence there." said Francis Zoet, the founder of The Great Bubble Barrier.

【推荐3】Air pollution remains a critical health risk in the European Union, claiming over 500,000 lives in 2021, with findings suggesting nearly half of these could have been prevented if pollution were reduced to levels recommended by health experts. Data from the European Environment Agency (EEA) show that of these deaths, 253,000 were linked to exposure to fine particulate matter (PM2.5) going beyond the World Health Organization’s (WHO) guideline limit of 5 micrograms per cubic meter. These particles are especially dangerous as they can pass into the bloodstream and affect various organs. Nitrogen dioxide and ozone also contributed to the mortality (死亡频率) statistics, associated with 52,000 and 22,000 deaths respectively. The EU’s environment commissioner, Virginijus Sinkevicius, underlined that air pollution poses the top environmental health risk in the EU. Nevertheless, there is evidence of improvement, with deaths from PM2.5 decreasing by 41% between 2005 and 2021, and the EU targets a reduction of 55% by 2030.

In response to these concerns, the WHO, which updated its air quality guidelines in 2021, warns that no level of air pollution can be considered safe but has set upper limits for certain pollutants. The European Parliament vote to bring the EU’s air quality standards in line with the WHO but decided to delay doing so until 2035.

Sinkevicius said that air quality is indeed improving due to effective clean air policies. Beyond death counts, the EEA also assessed air pollution’s broader impact on diseases such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and diabetes, stressing not only mortality but the quality of life impacts. EEA researcher Alberto Gonzalez Ortiz pointed to severe disability states caused by these conditions, worsened by air pollution.

The EEA’s comprehensive approach shows that while the fight against air pollution has seen progress, immediate action is still critical to reduce pollution and reduce its widespread effects on public health.