1 . Many people around me make a difference to the world on a daily basis — being kind in unexpected ways and sharing the generosity of their lives with others. I, like many of them, volunteer some of my time in order to give back just a little of what I am so blessed to have. I volunteered to go to Guatemala with an eyeglass team from International Relief Teams — an organization I have supported in other ways for many years.

Our team went to a small town in Guatemala, San Augustin. We set up our tables and packages of pre-made glasses in the dirty courtyard of a clinic, put up the Snellen chart (an eye chart) on a wall, and began our work.

Young and old people came from many of the surrounding towns. Most had never received an eye exam before. They waited for hours patiently in the sun, never complaining. If we could help them out, their thankfulness for a simple pair of glasses was overwhelming. Some only left with eye drops or sunglasses, and even these people expressed their gratitude sincerely. All of them were very generous with blessings and smiles. We heard over and over from people who knew their eyes needed help but they had not gone to a doctor because it was too expensive, or had not got the glasses they needed for the same reason.

It’s so easy to overlook how much difference the volunteers’ small actions can make to the lives of people in Guatemala. The glasses in my country are so easily available, but to people in Guatemala, they are not.

As those who could give them a hand, we watched their lives change. What a gift sight is — and what a difference being able to see clearly makes! Here, we’d like you to join us and take action to help people in need. And every day, those actions change lives. No action is too small; no action is ever wasted.

2 . Walking has been considered as one kind of rewarding exercise. For many people, daily walking offers massive and long-term physical and mental benefits.     1     A Stanford University study found that participants were more creative when walking as opposed to sitting.

    2     You’ve probably heard the phrase “exercise your creativity”. Our creative mindset is stirred up by physical movement, which is exactly why walking with your dog, a friend, or alone feeds creative thinking.

But the scenery is almost as important as the sweat. Just by going outside, you are stepping out of your habitual surroundings and your comfort zone, which is necessary if you want to open your mind to new possibilities. You can walk through a tree-filled neighborhood.     3     Even when you walk down a busy street, you can’t help but get distracted by the sweet smells from a food cart or the child pointing to a building you haven’t even noticed before.

Walking outside develops our ability to collect new ideas and take in new sights, sounds, smells, and flavors. Shinrin-yoku, a common form of relaxation in Japan, suggests that being in the forest and walking among the trees there can lower your stress levels.     4     Research has shown that

So instead of setting a fitness goal, why not set a creativity goal that starts with walking outdoors?     5     For example, you can turn off your phone and give yourself the chance to be present in the world, to hear conversations and natural sounds, and to notice the way people move and the way the sun reflects in a lake.

Walk not just for exercise. Walk for wonder.

3 . Self-control is the ability to regulate and adjust responses in order to avoid undesirable behaviors, increase desirable ones, and achieve long-term goals. Common goals such as losing weight, exercising regularly, eating healthy food, giving up bad habits, and saving money are just a few worthwhile ambitions that people believe require self-control.

One 2011 survey conducted by the American Psychological Association found that 27 percent of subjects identified a lack of willpower as the primary factor keeping them from reaching their goals. Researchers have found that people who have better self-control tend to be healthier and happier. In one experiment, students who exhibited greater self-control had better grades and higher test scores, and were more likely to be admitted to a competitive academic program. The study also found that when it came to academic success, self-control was a more important factor than IQ scores.

The psychologist Walter Mischel conducted famous experiments in 1975 that were related to delayed gratification. In these experiments, children were offered a choice: they could choose to eat one treat right away, usually a cookie or a candy or they could wait for a brief period of time in order to get two treats. At this point, the researcher would leave the child alone in a room with a single treat. Not surprisingly, many of the kids chose to eat the single treat the moment the experimenters left the room. However, some of the kids were able to wait for the second treat.

Based on his research, Mischel proposed what he referred to as a “hot-and-cool” system to explain the ability to delay gratification. The hot system refers to the part of our willpower that is emotional and impulsive (冲动的) and urges us to act upon our desires. The cool system is the part of our willpower that is rational (理性的) and thoughtful, and enables us to consider the consequences of our actions in order to resist our impulses.

Self-control is an important skill that allows us to regulate behavior in order to achieve our long-term goals. Research has shown that self-control is not only important for goal attainment, and people with greater willpower also tend to do better on all sides.

4 . In this new digital era, farmers are finding ways to keep pace with the times while still holding fast to their traditions.

In the quiet and excluded parts of rural China, Xiang Qing, a man born in 1990, leads a life quite unlike the noisy urban existence that defines modernity. His home is Guzhang county, Xiangxi Tujia and Miao autonomous region, which is located deep in western Hunan province. Xiang Qing and his 23-year-old nephew, Xiang Hong, jointly operate a video channel called “Shan Bai”. Through their videos, they showcase handicrafts and rural life in China, fascinating many young urban viewers.

“Life here unfolds at its own pace. We grow crops and vegetables and occasionally purchase meat at the market,” Xiang Qing said. “I’ve come across numerous comments from people who watch our videos while lying in bed at night after a busy day of work, finding them truly relaxing and comforting. I think it’s great, and it’s in line with our initial intentions.”

Five years ago, Xiang Qing quit his job as a customer service representative in Shanghai and returned to his hometown in Guzhang county, starting a new journey as a video blogger. “Back in 2012, when I was a college student, film-making aroused my passion, and it has continued to be a profound and enduring interest,” he said.

Following in his uncle’s footsteps, Xiang Hong made the same life-changing decision. Having graduated from college last year, he also returned to his hometown in April from Changde, a city in Hunan, and ventured into the world of video production alongside his uncle.

Now their video channel Shan Bai has attracted more than 59.8 million followers. Xiang Qing designs, films, and edits the videos himself. Xiang Hong serves as the video presenter. Long Lingling, Xiang Qing’s wife, manages the day-to-day operations of the video account, and other family members also contribute to the video production process in different ways.

7 . If you have the strange feeling that you’ve read this before, don’t be alarmed. It’s probably just déjà vu. Déjà vu is the strange feeling that you’ve experienced something before, while at the same time knowing that you haven’t. You visit a friend’s apartment and have the overwhelming sense you’ve been here before, but that can’t be the case. This is the first time you’ve ever visited this city. Still, the feeling may be so real that you almost know what you’ll find when you walk into the kitchen.

Experts estimate roughly two out of three people have had the experience at least once. The experience typically lasts no more than a few seconds and there’s no warning of when it’s about to happen, making it extremely difficult to study. Much that is known about déjà vu is based on surveys. Still, researchers have come up with novel ways to study it in the wild.

Anne Cleary, professor of cognitive psychology and memory researcher, used virtual reality (VR) to trigger (引发) déjà vu. Cleary and her team took subjects through a series of scenes in the video game, carefully designed so that the spatial layout (空间布局) of one scene was similar to another, even though the actual images were quite different. The subjects experienced déjà vu when a scene was similar to one they’d seen before, suggesting that a similarity in spatial layout between two places might lead to a déjà vu-like sense of familiarity in a novel place.

“There may be many different reasons that could all be true for why déjà vu can happen,” Cleary says. Though no one has yet explained what causes déjà vu, it’s a good thing that science finally got serious about studying the strange phenomenon. “I think déjà vu research has been shedding light on processes that are helping us to understand memory better at a wider level than just trying to understand déjà vu,” says Cleary.

8 . Blind people have long desired for brightness, but scientists don’t have the technology. To bring that one step closer to reality, Zhiyong Fan, a materials scientist of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, developed a new artificial eye recently. The device, which is about as sensitive to light and has sharper vision and a faster reaction time than a real eyeball, may outperform human eyes.

The human eye owes its wide field of view and clear eyesight to the retina (视网膜) — an area at the back of the eyeball covered in light-detecting cells. The design for a new artificial eye is based on the structure of the human eye and uses a friendly light-sensitive material. At the back of the eyeball, an artificial retina is lined with Nan scale light sensors (纳米级光感器). Those sensors measure light that passes through the lens (晶状体) at the front of the eye. Wires attached to the back of the retina send signals from those sensors to the processor, similar to the way nerve networks connect the eyeball to the brain.

“In the future, we can use this to replace damaged human eyes,” says the lead designer. In theory, this artificial eye could see more clearly than the human eye, because the artificial retina contains about 460 million light sensors per square centimeter while a real retina has about 10 million light-detecting cells per square centimeter. Besides, the artificial eyeball records changes in lighting faster than human eyes can — within about 30 to 40 milliseconds, rather than 40 to 150 milliseconds. Although its 100-degree field of view isn’t as broad as the150 degrees a human eye can take in, the device can see as well as the human eye in poor light.

Hongrui Jiang, an electrical engineer at the University of Wisconsin, though, thinks engineers need a much more practical and efficient way to produce vast series of tiny wires on the back of the artificial eyeball to give it superhuman sight, which is super hard to achieve.