【推荐2】Research has shown that listening to music while showering, taking a walk or travelling to school could affect your ability to think outside the box and come up with artistic or creative things to do. Experts say being bored can lead to daydreaming plus the birth of new ideas.

While there is nothing wrong with listening to music, doing so when taking a shower or going for a walk takes away time that could be spent thinking about yourself and your life—the perfect time to let your creative juices flow. Happiness expert Gretchen Rubin said, “You need this open-searching time in order for new ideas to spring up. This is why people get ideas in the shower or in the middle of the night—it’s a period of time when the brain creates its own fun. It’s when I’m bored that I have big insights because my brain is open and trying to entertain itself.”

A recent study by psychologists showed the same process at work. In the research, two groups of people were expected to come up with proposals. They were then asked to complete the task in two backgrounds. One is in a quiet room while the other is with music playing. Researchers found, compared to participants who completed tasks in a quiet background, participants who listened to music performed less creatively.

So, is it best to throw away the bath-time tunes? Most people said the research was a real mood killer. One said, “Sometimes, I need the music to cover all the thoughts I don’t want to think.” Another commented, “Many people have too much going on in their heads. That’s why they listen to music in the shower, by which they can actually relax.” But other listeners said they liked having quiet time while travelling home at the end of the day.

In any case, striking a good balance and listening to music sometimes but being quiet at other times could be the best balance in our life.

【推荐3】The mosquito is a troublesome and sometimes dangerous insect. Their bites itch (发痒) and can carry dangerous diseases, like malaria and yellow fever. However, researchers from Britain and Japan recently discovered how mosquitoes fly. This knowledge, they said, helps find ways to design new flying devices.

Mosquitoes’ wings are small and have an uncommon shape. Because of this, it is hard to believe that they are able to fly. So how does their flight make possible? The team of scientists from Britain and Japan solved the puzzle. They used high-speed cameras and computer images to understand the rules of how the insect moves its wings to stay in the air. Researchers at the University of Oxford took images of mosquitoes’ wing movements. They set up eight high-speed cameras that take l0, 000 images each second.

Simon Walker, a researcher at the University of Oxford, said, “Normally to record an insect you need at least two cameras, perfectly more, so you’ve got enough views of an insect because with two camera views you can then take any point on an insect and calculate(计算) its 3D coordinates.” They find mosquitoes fly by moving their wings in several different directions.

The research team believes the mosquitoes’ wing movements could help inventors design new flying devices. Walker said that existing unmanned flying devices or drones do not work very well outside because wind can affect their flight. “Insects, on the other hand, deal really well with even quite windy conditions. So understanding bow they can do this is going to be advantageous to us in the future.”

These researchers said that, more importantly, humans can benefit a lot from understanding how mosquitoes fly.