【推荐2】There are several ways of retelling “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”. In 2005 Hollywood focused on Willy Wonka, the factory’s owner, portraying him as a purple-gloved man-child. A new musical production of Roald Dahl’s children’s story at the Theatre Royal in London concentrates on the up-from-poverty fortune of Charlie Bucket, the boy who finds the golden ticket.

Tales of upward social mobility attempted or achieved are crowding the London stage. “Billy Elliott”, the story of a miner’s son who strives with the death of family strikes to make it as a ballet dancer, recently celebrated its four-millionth visitor. “Port”, an account of a Stockport girl’s attempts to escape her depressing origins, was a success at the National Theatre this spring. Last year “In Basildon” described strivers in the typical upwardly-mobile Essex town.

It is a respectable theatrical (and literary) theme, but it is being handled in a different way. John Osborne’s 1956 play “Look Back in Anger” showed a working-class man’s anger at the middle class he had married into. By the 1970s and 1980s writers were looking down their noses at social climbers, in plays like “Top Girls” and “Abigail’s Party”, in which a middle-class arriviste (暴发户) serves inferior snacks and the wrong kind of wine.

Social mobility moved away as a topic for a while, as playwrights like David Hare turned to examine carefully the state of the nation. Now it has returned—and is described much more sympathetically. Dominic Cooke, who directed “In Basildon” at the Royal Court Theatre, says this may be a delayed reaction to the collapse of state socialism in Europe.

A possible reason for the sympathetic tone is that upward mobility can no longer be taken for granted. In 2011 researchers at the London School of Economics concluded that intergenerational social mobility, assessed by income for children born between 1970 and 2000, had suspended. Another study, by Essex University academics, found matters had not improved during the crisis.

So it is fantastic fun to see people make it. Charlie Bucket does so spectacularly(壮观地). At the end of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” he is a pint-size entrepreneur(企业家), with an immigrant workforce of Oompa-Loompas to ensure he does not fall back down the social ladder.

【推荐3】The spiders have long, scary legs. Some spiders even bite. But Spider-Man is another story. He might help people see spiders less negatively, a new study finds.

After Menachem Ben-Ezra, a proud fan of the Marvel (漫威漫画公司)films and also a psychologist. saw the movie Ant-Man and the Wasp (黄蜂), lie walked out with a sudden scientific idea that he should measure people before they went into the theater, and afterwards to see if the fear of ants would be reduced or changed.

Ben-Ezra and his colleagues asked 424 people questions, about one-quarter of them about spiders, such as “Did they find them scary?” “Did seeing one make their hearts race and palms sweat?” A second group received similar questions, this time about ants. The last two groups got the same questions about other insects. Afterward, everyone watched videos. Group one got a Spider-Man movie. Group two saw Ant-Man and the Wasp. Groups three and four watched unrelated video-wheat waving peacefully in the breeze.

After viewing the movie, Ben-Ezra again asked the participants how they felt about spiders, ants or insects in general-and found the ant and spider exposures seemed to make people insensitive and less afraid. Between 3.5 and 6.1 percent of people experience such a phobia (恐惧症) of spiders. Phobias can stop people from traveling, working and enjoying their lives.

Ben-Ezra hopes that their movie research might help people with phobias. But they caution that people with phobias shouldn’t just run out and watch movies and expect their fears to go away. “What we did is only the first step in a very long road.” Ben-Ezra says. “We didn’t say you’ll be cured. We don’t have evidence for that.” But eventually, presenting people’s fears in a positive context-such as a superhero movie—might help people surmount their fear or disgust. After all, if spiders produce Spicier-Man, maybe they’re not so bad.

【推荐1】Parallel worlds exist and interact with our world, say physicists.

Quantum mechanics (量子力学), though firmly tested, is so weird and anti-intuitive that physicist Richard Feynman once remarked, “I think I can safely say nobody understands quantum mechanics.” Attempts to explain some of the bizarre (奇异的) consequences of quantum theory have led to some mind-bending ideas, such as the Copenhagen interpretation and the many-worlds interpretation.

Now there’s a new theory on the block, called the “many interacting worlds” hypothesis (假设) (MIW), and the idea is just as profound as it sounds. The theory suggests not only parallel worlds exist, but that they interact with our world on the quantum level and are thus detectable. Though still speculative (推测的), the theory may help to finally explain some of the bizarre consequences inherent in quantum mechanics.

The theory is a spinoff of the many-worlds interpretation in quantum mechanics—an assumption that all possible alternative histories and futures are real, each representing an actual, though parallel, world. One problem with the many-worlds interpretation, however, has been that it is fundamentally untestable, since observations can only be made in our world. Happenings in these proposed “parallel” worlds can thus only be imagined.

MIW, however, says otherwise. It suggests that parallel worlds can interact on the quantum level, and in fact that they do.

“The idea of parallel universes in quantum mechanics has been around since 1957,” explained Howard Wiseman, a physicist at Griffith University in Brisbane, Australia, and one of the physicists to come up with MIW. “In the well-known ‘Many-Worlds Interpretation’, each universe branches into a bunch of new universes every time a quantum measurement is made. All possibilities are therefore realized — in some universes the dinosaur-killing asteroid (小行星) missed Earth. In others, Australia was colonized by the Portuguese.”

“But critics question the reality of these other universes, since they do not influence our universe at all,” he added. “On this score, our ‘Many Interacting Worlds’ approach is completely different, as its name implies.”

Wiseman and colleagues have proposed that there exists “a universal force of repulsion between ‘nearby’(i.e. similar) worlds, which tends to make them more dissimilar.” Quantum effects can be explained by factoring in this force, they propose.

When asked about whether their theory might imply that humans could someday interact with other worlds, Wiseman said: “It’s not part of our theory. But the idea of human interactions with other universes is no longer pure fantasy.”

What might your life look like if you made different choices? Maybe one day you'll be able to look into one of these alternative worlds and find out.

【推荐2】New research about male guppies, a tropical fish found in most fresh and saltwater environments published in the journal Functional Ecology suggests that male guppies exposed to high predation (捕食行动) levels often develop larger brain sizes than those living in low-risk environments. Consequently, the development of larger brain sizes among the male guppy population allows for better chances of survival under high predation conditions.

The team began its research in the southern Caribbean. They concentrated their observations on populations located in two independent rivers. In each, they collected male guppies living above and below the waterfalls. A small amount of predators lived in the waters above the waterfall, therefore the local guppy population had evolved (进化) under predation-poor conditions into a predation-poor population.

On the other hand, below the waterfall, predators were found to be increasing, making environment dangerous. Scientists noticed that male guppies located above the waterfalls often displayed on average smaller brain sizes than males living under the waterfall.

The next step was to find out if male guppies from high-predation population only had larger brains as a result of long evolutionary processes or a direct response to exposure (暴露) to risk during development. This question took the team away from the tropics and back to the laboratory, taking a sample group of guppies originating from high predation group. These were divided into two test populations. The first group was exposed to the sight and smell of a predator living in a nearby aquarium for five minutes at a time, five times a week. The other guppies served as a control group and lived in non-predatory places. The results showed that males exposed to predators have 21 per cent heavier brains than those of the control group.

Male guppies are generally more colorful than females and thus more likely to be exposed to predation threats. The increase in intellect could offer males advantages such as the ability to detect and react to danger earlier, increasing their chances of survival.

【推荐3】It is the golden decade,the time in your life when you are carefree and at your happiest.Never again will you enjoy the freedom and thrills of your 20s.A new study has now confirmed the fears of anyone approaching middle-age-people's 20s are their happiest years.

But,while researchers warn of lower life satisfaction for 40 years,there is hope.Their findings show that life does get better at 65,with happiness levels rising.Dr Ioana Ramia,from the University of New South Wales in Australia,said,"Satisfaction over life decreases from the early 20s,plateaus for about 40 years and then increases from about 65 up."

The aim of the research was to help develop policy to target specific age groups.Dr Ramia and her team found that happiness follows a U-curve with the highest levels experienced by those aged 15 to 24 and over 75.

Dr Ramia said,couples reported greatest satisfaction at life just before having their first child and a decrease from the child's first year of life through to when the child reaches six years old and starts school.She said,"It then stays low,but increases slightly,and is the highest around the age of 80.So that's something to look forward to."Her team's research shows a strong connection between the middle-age happiness state and employment opportunities and financial situations,when"money and...jobs matter most".

There was a greater emphasis on the quality of housing itself into middle age and beyond,along with neighborhood and community."At this time happiness is at its lowest and it only starts to increase when people start focusing on other things,like their free time,"said Dr Ramia.Safety was an important aspect of life satisfaction in every age group,while health appeared twice-in the mid-30s with the first awareness of physical fallibility or illness,and again later in life,she said.

Though her research had shed some light onto the drivers of happiness,Dr Ramia said the peak at young and old age remained poorly understood,with question marks around how satisfaction could remain constant across the major parameters described yet manage to increase with age overall. Defining what"satisfaction"was and how it was rated by subjects was also a challenge for future research,she said.