【推荐1】To understand meditation（冥想）through an experiment, you can take two pictures with a camera. Hold your camera still and take the first picture. Now, shake your camera and take the second picture. The difference in clarity（清晰度）between the two pictures is the difference in clarity of a life with and without meditation.

Meditation means different things to different people. There are many methods to reach the state of meditation. Our intention in this Life School Message is not to compare different practices. What we'd like to do is to give you a glimpse into what benefits can arise as a result of meditation.

One of the most important functions for human survival is the ability to adapt and adjust to our surroundings. The brain and body are dealing with an unbelievable amount of stimuli(刺激) in every single moment of life. Focusing on all of them at once would be impossible. So, the mind tends to shift as many stimuli as possible to the subconscious back burner.

For example, you probably aren't paying attention to the feel of your shirt on your body until you read this sentence. Now that I've mentioned it, I've brought it back into your conscious thoughts, and you do notice it. Somewhere in the next few paragraphs, your mind will place it on the back burner again to be able to focus on understanding this article. Fascinating, isn't it? Our minds do this constantly.

Meditation helps you to increase your awareness and helps you to stay focused on the right things of life. It ensures you do not get distracted and helps you do stay alert. It helps you to understand the past, live the present and create the future.

For the people who have no knowledge or experience of this particular subject, let me share a basic yet one of the most powerful methods that can lead you to meditation.

【推荐3】The Pursuit of Happiness

There are plenty of reasons to seek happiness． Research has shown that arthritis (关节炎) patients who have a “positive affect” are able to take more daily steps than those who are unhappy.     1    Plus, experiencing joy just feels good. So, here are some small, surprising ways to feel happier．

According to a 2014 study in Psychological Science, writing in a journal can make people happy, even if the entries are ordinary. We tend to forget the little things in life that bring us pleasure．     2    

Another thing you can do to keep happy is to have some kind of goal or principle that orients your life and moves you into the future.     3    Either way, it should be one that motivates you and organizes the activities of your day around something greater than yourself．

    4    “Literary fiction is shown to increase brain activity and improve our capacity for empathy, compassion and understanding,” says Neil Pasricha, the author of seven books on happiness (including the upcoming You Are Awesome). He recommends paper books to reduce screen time．

    5    Whether they’re romantic partners, friends, children or co-workers, other people help remind us of what’s important in life and help us weather the ups and downs of personal and political problems. They usually cannot solve these problems, but they can comfort you emotionally and soften the impact of real-world issues．

【推荐1】It is widely accepted that being overweight definitely poses a danger to our health. According to a new study, obesity may even damage the brain’s ability to recognize the sensation of fullness and be satisfied after eating fats and sugars.

Further, those brain changes may last even after people considered medically obese lose a significant amount of weight — possibly explaining why many people often regain the pounds they lose.

The study, published Monday in Nature Metabolism, was a controlled clinical trial in which 30 people considered to be medically obese and 30 people of normal weight were fed sugar carbohydrates (glucose), fats (lipids) or water (as a control). Each group of nutrients was fed directly into the stomach via a feeding tube on separate days.

The night before the testing, all 60 study participants had the same meal for dinner at home and did not eat again until the feeding tube was in place the next morning. As either sugars or fats entered the stomach via the tube, researchers used functional magnetic resonance(磁共振) imaging and single-photon emission computed tomography(断层扫描技术) to capture the brain’s response over 30 minutes.

In people with normal weight, the study found brain signals in the striatum(纹状体) slowed when either sugars or fats were put into the digestive system — evidence that the brain recognized the body had been fed. At the same time, levels of dopamine rose in those at normal weight, signaling that the reward centers of the brain were also activated. However, when the same nutrients were given via feeding tube to people considered medically obese, brain activity did not slow, and dopamine levels did not rise.

Next, the study asked people with obesity to lose 10% of their body weight within three months — an amount of weight known to improve blood sugars, reset metabolism and boost overall health.

Tests were repeated as before — with surprising results. Losing weight did not reset the brain in people with obesity.

Much more research is needed to fully understand what obesity does to the brain, and if that is triggered by the fat tissue itself, the types of food eaten, or other environmental and genetic factors.

【推荐2】Mapping Antarctica

Antarctica was on the map long before anyone ever laid eyes on it. Nearly 2,400 years ago, ancient Greek philosophers such as Aristotle believed that a great continent must exist at the bottom of the world. They though it was needed to balance out the continents at the top of the world. In the 1500s, mapmakers often included a fanciful continent they referred to as Terra Incognita(Latin for “unknown land”) at the bottom of their maps. But it was not until the 1800s -----after explorers had sighted and set foot on Antarctica----- that mapmakers got down to the business of really mapping the continent, which is one—and—a –half times rhe size of the U.S..

While the coastline could be mapped by ships sailing around the continent, it took airplanes—and later, satellites---to chart Antarctica’s vast interior(内陆). That job continues today. And it is a job that still require a mapmaker, or cartographer, to put on boots and head out into the wild.

Cole Kelleher is familiar with that. He is a cartographer with the Polar Geospatial Center(PGC), which is based at the University of Minnesota and has a staff at McMurdo Station. PGC teamed up with Google to use the company’s Trekker technology to capture images of Antarctica for the Internet giant’s popular feature, Street View. A Trekker camera, which is the size of a basketball, is set about two feet above a backpack. The camera records image in all directions. “It weighs about 50 pounds. I was out for two and a half days, hiking 10 to 12 hours each day,” says Kelleher. It was hard work, but really an incredible experience.” According to Kelleher there are plans to use the technology to create educational apps for museums.

The PGC staff at McMurdo Station provides highly specialized mapmaking services for the U.S. Antarctic Program. For one project, Kelleher used satellite images to map huge cracks in the ice. That helped a team of researchers know whether they could safely approach their field camp on snowmobiles. Another recent project was to help recover a giant, high—tech helium(氦气) balloon used to carry scientific instruments high into the atmosphere. These balloons are launched in Antarctica because there is no danger that they will hurt anyone when they fall back down to Earth. Using satellite images, Kelleher and colleagues created maps of where the balloon could be found.

Antarctica may no longer be Terra Incognita, but it still holds countless mysteries. Cartographers and the maps they make will continue to be essential in helping scientists unlock those secrets.