【推荐1】Today, anxiety disorders are the most common mental health issues in the US, affecting 30% of adults. In 2021, a survey of 8,000 children led by Oxford University Press named anxiety as the Word of the Year. “It’s the word on everyone’s lip, the challenge of the moment,” Dr. Tracy Dennis Tiwary says, a professor of psychology, immersed in research — evaluating which mental health treatment worked and why.

The idea that anxiety is something to manage or eradicate, a habit to be broken, is wrong and actually doing us harm. It’s literally a recipe for more anxiety. This is central message in Dennis Tiwary’s new book, Future Tense. She concludes that the problem isn’t anxiety itself, but our belief about it and our attempts to avoid it, which are not only destined to fail, but make us weaker and more fragile. It’s a vicious cycle.

To help reframe anxiety as an ally not an enemy, Dennis takes a deep dive into the emotion itself. Anxiety is different to fear, which is the certainty that something bad is happening to you. Anxiety is about uncertainty; it’s the feeling that something bad could happen, but might not. Unlike fear, anxiety contains hope. Anxiety can focus the mind, drive you to revise harder, to see a doctor, to seek new pathways towards your chosen career.

Anxiety helps us forge forwards with creative solutions, but there are times when there is little we can do to address a future uncertainty. Dennis suggests many ways of coping with it. Connecting with friends and family is a soothing first step. Cultivating things that immerse you in the present moment is also helpful. Our emotional systems are like immune systems. If it isn’t exposed to germs, it remains weak. It’s only by feeling our anxiety, listening and acting on it that we cope better next time.

【推荐2】Why do people long for celebrity news? At least some of the hunger centers around schadenfreude—having joy from the suffering of others. People often act as if joy is dependent on achieving material gain. Seeing people that seem to “have it all” suffer (going through divorce, drug abuse, mental illness, etc.) momentarily destroys that thought. And then people can think, “Perhaps it’s OK that I don’t have my own television show, and own four large houses.” Let’s chat a bit more about schadenfreude and related concepts. If you’ve been alive a couple of decades, you’ve certainly seen plenty of examples showing that money does not bring happiness. But what does bring happiness? One of the keys involves learning to fully attend to and enjoy the present moment—not just learning this as information, but, through practice, developing the skill of living mindfully in this moment.

Other keys to happiness involve developing the skill of compassion (同情) and loving kindness. This may seem strange to readers: developing a skill of compassion? Don’t you just have or not have compassion? There are some types of meditation (冥想) originating from Buddhist traditions that are designed to develop compassion and loving kindness.

The four related qualities developed by these types of meditation practices are termed: loving kindness, calmness, compassion, and sympathetic joy. Sympathetic joy is the exact opposite of schadenfreude—with sympathetic joy, we get joy from the joy of others. Think of a close family member doing well and notice the joy you feel—that is sympathetic joy. To develop more sympathetic joy, when something good happens to another person, say to yourself (with as much meaning as possible), “I’m happy for you. May your good fortune continue. May your good fortune grow.”

When a person, celebrity or not, is suffering, you can practice a compassion meditation. Close your eyes and imagine a scene that naturally brings forth sympathy, such as hugging a loved one, or holding a baby. Then imagine saying to the person suffering, “May you be free from suffering,” or “May your suffering ease.”

【推荐3】Forgiveness is important in children and adults for restoring relationships and limiting future conflicts. A recent study suggests that teaching children to understand other people's perspectives could make it easier for them to learn how to forgive other people. The study also found that teaching children to make sincere apologies can help them receive forgiveness from others.

Mulvey, an associate professor of psychology at North Carolina State University, led the study. Her team enlisted 185 children, aged between 5 and 14, in the study. Researchers conducted in an interview with each child that collected background information and assessed the child's "theory of mind" skills. Theory of mind is your ability to understand that someone else's beliefs, intentions and desires are different from your own.

Researchers then led each child through a series of scenarios (设想情况) involving other children who are "in group" and "out group." Specifically, each participant was told they were part of a group, such as the green team. During interviews, researchers described some children as also being on the green team (making them in-group), while other children were on the yellow team (making them out-group). In each scenario, interviewers asked study participants whether they were willing to forgive a group that left them out of a game or activity.

There were three main findings. First, children are more likely to forgive someone if he/she has apologized. Second, children are more likely to forgive people who are "in group." Third, the more advanced a child's theory of mind skills are, the more likely they are to forgive others.

The researchers identified two things that parents and teachers may want to focus on related to forgiveness. One is helping kids understand how important it is to apologize in a meaningful way. The second focus area is helping kids understand the perspectives of other people, even if they are different from you.

Mulvey says, “One of the biggest implications of our study is that teachers and parents need to actively help children cultivate theory of mind skills, which will aid them in navigating a diverse and complex world in the future.”

【推荐1】As its name suggests, the common swift is a common bird that lives all across Europe and much of Asia, but their flight time is anything but common. It currently holds the record for the most time spent in the air per year, with data showing that some species can spend up to 10 months out of 12 without landing even once. They drink and eat in the air, feeding on any insects that they can catch in flight. They can mate in the air as well, and they can also sleep in the air by gliding on warm air currents known as “thermals”.

A team of researchers at Lund University developed a new type of micro-data logger to track the birds’ movements, and fitted them to 19 common swifts that were later caught again. Without going into too much detail about the results of the study, the findings showed that common swifts spent over 99% of their time during the 10-month non-breeding period in the air.

“A few swifts in our study never landed during this period,” study author Anders Hedenström told Seeker, adding that he believed the birds somehow sleep while flying. The study didn’t analyze how common swifts can do that, but it’s supposed that it is through a mechanism similar to that of frigate birds and Alpine swifts, which also can stay in the air for months.

Common swifts are born to fly. Their bodies have adapted to the almost non-stop flight-their wings are long and narrow, their legs are short and light, and they have an almost perfect aerodynamic shape. They also change their feathers very slowly over a period of six months, so as not to affect their flight.

Swifts generally have a higher survivability rate compared to most birds, and their love of flight is believed to directly influence that. Being in the air for long periods of time means they don’t have to worry about meeting predators except those catching then by accident. Data shows that common swifts can reach ages of 20 years or more, and fly over three million kilometers. That’s seven round trips to the moon.

【推荐3】For fishermen and sailors in the seaside town of Shangpan in Linhai, Zhejiang province, where recently 12 stranded（搁浅的）whales were found, it is not unusual to spot whales or dolphins in the sea — they would always call them haizi, or “son of the ocean”. And if the local fishermen spot such intelligent sea creatures in need, they will save them from danger without hesitation.

In the recent rescue of melon-headed whales, they tried their best to help as a 37-second video of a young man sleeping in the water holding a whale soon went viral online, with netizens applauding his constant efforts and caring heart in trying to keep the whale alive. “The melon-headed whale knew I was trying to save it and would be more cooperative and wouldn’t move.” said Lu Wenhui, a 21-year-old diver from Hangzhou Changqiao Polar Ocean Park, who held up the whale’s head so it could breathe easily. Lu had been staying in the water for 10 hours by 4 a.m. Wednesday after coming for the rescue work on Tuesday, when the stranded whales were first spotted.

“Whales are mammals and need to breathe in air — that’s why I had to hold its head, to ensure it could breathe smoothly the whole time,” Lu said. The stranded whales, after the struggling of being transported, were worn out when they arrived at the fish farm and might have drowned if they were left unattended.

The reason why the whales were stranded is still not clear. And these stranded whales were returned to the ocean because they are not adapted to artificial breeding environments on land.

【推荐3】If you stand in front of a group of kids, and start stating facts and ideas about a particular topic, like common trees found in a forest, their eyes will probably become dull because they’ll get bored. There might be a few people with a particular interest in trees who remain attentive, but it’s likely that most will lose interest fairly quickly. But if you stand up in front of that same group of people and tell them a story, something different will happen.

Researchers have now quantified (量化) the emotional benefits of a well-told tale. “We know that stories can transport us to another world,” says Guilherme Brockington, the lead author of the new paper. Earlier research suggests that stories help children process and regulate their emotions — but it was mostly conducted in a laboratory, with subjects answering questions while lying inside MRI (核磁共振) machines. There are few studies on psychological effects of storytelling in more commonplace scenes, such as hospitals.

So investigators working in several hospitals split a total of 81 patients aged between four and eleven into two groups, matching them with storytellers who had a decade of hospital experience. In one group, the storyteller led each child in playing a riddle game. In the other, youngsters chose books and listened as the storyteller read them aloud. Before and after these sessions, the researchers let each child spit into a tube, then asked them to report their pain levels and conducted a free-association word quiz.

Based on the analysis of each tube of saliva (唾液), the researchers found children in both groups showed lower levels of the stress-related hormone (荷尔蒙) called cortisol and higher levels of oxytocin, a feel-good hormone. However, the cortisol levels of kids in the storytelling group were a quarter of those in the riddle group, and their oxytocin levels were nearly twice as high. Those who heard stories reported pain levels dropping almost twice as much as those in the riddle group, and they used more positive words.

Next, the investigators plan to study how long these effects last. For now, Brockington says the results indicate storytelling is a low-cost and extremely efficient way to help improve health outcomes.