【推荐1】Not all fat is created equal. The fat most people picture is known as white fat, since it looks white or white-yellow when you see it under the skin. But you’re also born with brown fat, which, unsurprisingly, looks brown.

Brown fat — found in the neck and shoulders of newborns — is metabolically (新陈代谢地) efficient, in that it burns lots of calories, which serves the purpose of keeping you warm (important for newborns). We lose most of our brown fat as we age. By age six, we have less than five percent of the brown fat we were born with; the fat we gain over time is almost all white fat. One of the major causes of shortened lifetime and illnesses like type 2 diabetes and many cancers is the increasing level of white fat. So scientists have long tried to find ways to activate that fat or turn white fat into brown fat.

However, one roadblock to using brown fat is that all the good stuff that brown fat does has to be programmed into the previously white fat, but that has proved doable. A group in Delaware has activated brown fat in a few women with an already approved medication. Researchers at the University of Copenhagen (UCPH) have put white fat in test tubes and turned it into brown fat. They then injected the brown fat into fat sheep. As hoped, the sheep with more brown fat got thin and lost their metabolic syndrome and diabetes.

The timetable for this game-changing ability to turn white fat to brown fat is predicted to be less than five years away after human studies start. If scientists find a way to replace white fat with brown fat, it will likely mitigate risks of diseases like diabetes, heart disease, stroke, and brain disorder greatly and provide increased energy levels. That is, you become operationally younger. Bring it on!

【推荐2】NASA has made history today, conducting the very first powered flight on another planet. The Mars Helicopter Ingenuity (机智号) successfully took to the Red Planet skies for a brief journey, which will hopefully be the first of several.

Along with accumulating 30 minutes and 48 seconds of flight time, the helicopter has traveled over the surface a distance of 2.2 miles, flying as high as 12 meters and as fast as 5 meters per second.

Flying a craft for a few seconds might not sound like too big an accomplishment, but it’s quite a remarkable achievement of engineering. Ingenuity is flying in conditions unlike any possible on Earth - the gravity on Mars is only one-third as strong as Earth’s, and the atmosphere is extremely thin, at just one percent the density compared to the Earth. Combined with the extreme cold and a lengthy radio delay, the mission has got a lot that can go wrong.

And it already has. After surviving its first cold night on Mars, Ingenuity was set to take off on April 11, but a software error during a high-speed spin test of its rotors (螺旋桨) on April 9 threw a spanner in the works. After troubleshooting the issue, NASA developed a fix and beamed a software update to the Red Planet. If all goes to plan, NASA will conduct a few more flights over the next few weeks, sending Ingenuity higher and farther each time.

“Now, 117 years after the Wright brothers succeeded in making the first flight on our planet, NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter has left this amazing footprint of success on another world,” says Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA Associate Administrator for Science. “While these two symbolic moments in NASA history may be separated by time and 173 million miles of space, they now will forever be linked. To show respect for the two bicycle makers from Dayton, this first of many airfields on other worlds will now be known as Wright Brothers Field, in recognition of the ingenuity and creativity that continue to encourage exploration.”

What makes the flight of Ingenuity on Mars challenging?

【推荐1】We’ve heard for years that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. But, it actually might be even more important than previously thought, according to a study published in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, which examined the effects of skipping meals and meal frequency as related to mortality (死亡率) and heart health.

The study, which was published in August of last year, sought to find out if eating behaviors like meal frequency, meal skipping, and time between meals were associated with all-cause and cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality.

The study consisted of 24,011 adults 40 years or older who participated from 1999 to 2014. Researchers looked at various eating behaviors of participants who self-reported their eating habits every 24 hours. Causes of death were tracked via death records through December 31, 2015.

After examining participants throughout the years, researchers found that certain eating behaviors were in fact linked to higher rates of premature death. Eating only one meal per day was associated with an increased risk of all-cause and CVD mortality while skipping breakfast was linked to an increased risk of CVD mortality, and skipping lunch or dinner was linked to an increased risk of all-cause mortality. Lastly, the study found that having meals too closely together (less than four and half hours apart) was also linked to all-cause premature death.

So, what does this mean for the average person? “At the end of the day what matters is that an individual can meet their nutritional needs for optimal (最佳) health,” explains Keri Gans, author of The Small Change Diet, “and breakfast typically is a good vehicle for nutrients associated with a decrease in cardiovascular risk, such as fiber and vitamins”. “If by eliminating meals they are missing out on important nutrients their body needs, then long term that can be harmful to their health,” leads to a “higher risk for certain cancers and heart disease,” she says.

While this study was large and comprehensive in many ways, there are also many limitations. It was mostly based on a 24-hour, self-reported dietary recall, “which may not always be the best method for dietary assessment,” explains Gans. “The participants may not accurately recall what they ate or honestly report it leading to the potential of misinformation.” Researchers noted that it was impossible to consider the role of sleep in the relationship between food and mortality, as well as a host of other unmeasured factors.

The bottom line is that while these findings about the relationships between meal skipping and mortality are important, there are a lot more factors that go into premature death.

【推荐3】Popularization has in some cases changed the original meaning of emotional (情感的) intelligence. Many people now misunderstand emotional intelligence as almost everything desirable in a person’s makeup that cannot be measured by an IQ test, such as character, motivation, confidence, mental stability, optimism and “people skills.” Research has shown that emotional skills may contribute to some of these qualities, but most of them move far beyond skill-based emotional intelligence.

We prefer to describe emotional intelligence as a specific set of skills that can be used for either good or bad purposes. The ability to accurately understand how others are feeling may be used by a doctor to find how best to help her patients, while a cheater might use it to control potential victims. Being emotionally intelligent does not necessarily make one a moral person.

Although popular beliefs regarding emotional intelligence run far ahead of what research can reasonably support, the overall effects of the publicity have been more beneficial than harmful. The most positive aspect of this popularization is a new and much needed emphasis (重视) on emotion by employers, educators and others interested in promoting social well-being. The popularization of emotional intelligence has helped both the public and researchers re-evaluate the functionality of emotions and how they serve people adaptively in everyday life.

Although the continuing popular appeal of emotional intelligence is desirable, we hope that such attention will excite a greater interest in the scientific and scholarly study of emotion. It is our hope that in coming decades, advances in science will offer new perspectives (视角) from which to study how people manage their lives. Emotional intelligence, with its focus on both head and heart, may serve to point us in the right direction.

What is the author’s attitude to the popularization of emotional intelligence?

【推荐1】Adults understand what it feels like to be flooded with objects. Why do we often assume that more is more when it comes to kids and their belongings? The good news is that I can help my own kids learn earlier than I did how to live more with less.

I found the pre-holidays a good time to encourage young children to donate less-used things, and it worked. Because of our efforts, our daughter Georgia did decide to donate a large bag of toys to a little girl whose mother was unable to pay for her holiday due to illness. She chose to sell a few larger objects that were less often used when we promised to put the money into her school fund (基金) (our kindergarten daughter is serious about becoming a doctor).

For weeks, I’ve been thinking of bigger, deeper questions: How do we make it a habit for them? And how do we train ourselves to help them live with, need, and use less? Yesterday, I sat with my son, Shepherd, determined to test my own theory on this. I decided to play with him with only one toy for as long as it would keep his interest. I expected that one toy would keep his attention for about five minutes, ten minutes, max. I chose a red rubber ball—simple, universally available. We passed it, he tried to put it in his mouth, he tried bouncing it, rolling it, sitting on it, throwing it. It was totally, completely enough for him. Before I knew it an hour had passed and it was time to move on to lunch.

We both became absorbed in the simplicity of playing together. He had my full attention and I had his. My little experiment to find joy in a single object worked for both of us.

【推荐2】The researchers analyzed video recordings of 53 child-parent pairs during everyday activities at home and found children who play with puzzles between 26 and 46 months of age have better spatial skills when assessed at 54 months of age.

“The children who played with puzzles performed better than those who did not, on tasks that assessed their ability to rotate(旋转)and translate shapes,” Levine said in a statement.