3 . Obese people experience discrimination (歧视) in many parts of their lives, and the workplace is no exception. Studies have long shown that obese workers, defined as those with a body-mass index (BMI) of 30 or more, earn significantly less than their slimmer co-workers.

Yet the costs of weight discrimination may be even greater than previously thought. “The overwhelming evidence,” wrote the Institute for employment Studies, “is that it is only women living with obesity who experience the obesity wage penalty (薪资损失).” They were expressing a view that is widely aired in academic papers. To test it, The Economist has analyzed data concerning 23,000 workers from the American Time Use Survey, conducted by the Bureau of Labour Statistics. Our number-processing suggests that, in fact, being obese hurts the earnings of both women and men.

The data we analyzed cover men and women aged between 25 and 54 and in full-time employment. At a general level, it is true that men’s BMIs are unrelated to their wages. But that changes for men with university degrees. For them, obesity is associated with a wage penalty of nearly 8%, even after accounting for the separate effects of age, race, graduate education and marital status.

The conclusion — that well-educated workers in particular are penalized for their weight — holds for both sexes. Moreover, the higher your level of education, the greater the penalty. We found that obese men with a Bachelor’s degree (学士学位) earn 5% less than their thinner colleagues, while those with a Master’s degree earn 14% less. Obese women, it is true, still have it worse: for them, the equivalent figures are 12% and 19%, respectively (分别地).

Your line of work makes a difference, too. When we dealt with the numbers for individual occupations and industries, we found the greatest differences in high-skilled jobs. Obese workers in health care, for example, make 11% less than their slimmer colleagues; those in management roles make roughly 9% less, on average. In sectors such as construction and agriculture, meanwhile, obesity is actually associated with higher wages.

These results suggest that the total costs of wage discrimination borne by overweight workers in America are greater than expected. Now, it’s time for our governments to take it seriously.

It was Saturday. My daughter was showing me something in the backyard when I heard my name called out. I turned around and saw a little boy. “William!” I cried in surprise. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m helping my daddy lay turf,” he answered proudly.

“I’m sure he appreciates that,” I said. “This is William,” I told my daughter. “One of my students. He’s a joy to have in class.”

It was true. Little William was a delight. And even though he struggled with his reading, he never once complained. There was a brightness he brought with him wherever he went.

I’d never forget the day in class when another student was having trouble understanding the lesson. “Don’t worry,” William had told her, “Sometimes, second grade is really hard.” He was a gentle soul, wise beyond his years.

Still, I couldn’t help but worry. Despite his firm determination, William’s grades were poor. Some days, I wondered if he’d be able to pass.

Back at school, William’s grades showed no sign of improvement until the last few weeks of the year. As a class project, each child planted a sunflower seed in one of those containers small plant beds came in. I did this every year, with varying results. Planting the seeds was exciting for many of the students, the growing part much less so. It took too long to see results from daily watering, and most kids had little patience for it. They lost interest and forgot to care for their sunflowers-to-be.

But not William. Every afternoon, William made sure all the containers were watered and nurtured (培育). By the last week of school, the shoots were about four inches tall. I was amazed. In years past, few seeds successfully sprouted (发芽). And those that did had never gotten so tall. But these were different. These were William’s sunflowers.

The head caretaker maintained the flower beds on the school grounds. Before summer, I asked if he’d mind planting our seedlings (幼苗). We picked out the perfect spot behind the library. It could clearly be seen from the street. We transferred (转移) all 20 seedlings and hoped for the best.

William managed to enter third grade.

But when I saw them, I had to stop the car.

8 . 13-year-old Ava Dorsey is the founder of Ava’s Pet Palace, a business that sells organic dog and cat treats.“I actually had the idea when I was six with a picture I drew of a palace,”she says.It was a detailed design for dogs and cats and she had serious plans to build it one day.

Unlike most dog treats that you find in stores, dog treats sold by Ava’s Pet Palace are 100% organic, and are non-GMO(非转基因). Ava has set a goal for herself with these dog treats, and she wants every treat to be healthy, tasty, and top-quality. Seriously, some of her treats sound delicious enough for people to eat! “All of my bags now have the USDA organic stamp, and we're very excited to have gotten it because it's something I've wanted for a long time,”she says.“A lot of stores like to see organic products because customers like it, so that was really exciting.”

Ava says the biggest challenge of being a kid in business is when people don't take her seriously, but undoubtedly Ava has proved that her doubters are wrong! When asked how she defines(定义) success, Ava says,“When you hit a bump in the road, you shouldn't give up and you keep trying.”She learned that from her mom, who sounds like a smart lady! Some more things Ava has learned from her years in business: Hard work eventually pays off and there is nothing wrong with asking for help.

As far as the future of the pet treats industry goes, Ava is optimistic——but she’d also like to be an inspiration for change.“There’s not much diversity(多样性) right now, so that’s something I would love to see in the future,”says Ava.“I would also love to see more kids in this industry.There aren't many other teenagers around, and I hope that I can be an inspiration to others who hope to lead the pet industry.”

10 . Here’s an all-too-familiar situation: You excitedly packed for your beach trip. Luckily, you remembered all the necessities: socks, underwear, a phone charger and your passport, etc. But upon arrival, you realized you forgot to bring your toothbrush. In a new study, researchers suggest offloading important to-do items — for example, by setting reminders on your phone — could clear brain space to better remember the little things, like your toothbrush.

To prove this, the researchers developed a memory task to be played on a touch screen computer. The test was undertaken by 158 volunteers aged between 18 and 71. They were shown 12 numbered circles on the screen, and had to remember to drag some of these to the left and some to the right. The number of circles that they remembered to drag to the correct side decided their rewards at the end of the experiment. One side was “high value’, meaning that remembering to drag a circle to this side was worth 10 times as much money as remembering to drag a circle to the other “low value” side.

Volunteers performed this task 16 times. They had to use their own memory to remember at half of the trials and they were allowed to set reminders on the external digital devices for the other half.

The researchers found volunteers tended to use the digital devices to store details of the high-value circles. And, when they did so, their memory for those circles was improved by 18%. “What was unexpected was that their memory for low-value circles was also improved by 27%, even in those who had never set any reminders for low-value circles,” said Sam Gilbect.

However, results also showed a potential cost to using reminders. When reminders were taken away, the volunteers remembered the low-value circles better than the high-value ones. “Far from causing digital dementia (痴呆), using a memory device can even improve our memory for information that we never saved. But we need to be careful that we back up the most important information. Otherwise, if a memory tool fails, we could be left with nothing but less important   information in our own memory,” Gilbert said.