1 . When put to tests, bees have long proved that they’ve got a lot more to offer than pollinating (授粉), making honey and being loyal to a queen. The hard-working insects can change their behavior when things seem difficult, and now some scientists find there is proof that they also like to play.

Scientists from Queen Mary University of London performed an experiment, in which they set up a container that allowed bees to travel from their nest to a feeding area. But along the way, the bees could choose to pass through a separate section with some small wooden balls. Over 18 days, the scientists watched as the bees “went out of their way to roll wooden balls repeatedly, despite no apparent incentive (刺激) to do so.”

Earlier studies have shown that the black and yellow bugs are willing to learn new tricks in exchange for food or other rewards. In this case, to get rid of external factors, scientists made sure the bees had adapted to their new home and that their environment was stress-free.

The finding suggests that like humans, insects also interact with objects as a form of play. Also similar to people, younger bees seem to be more playful than adult bees. “This research provides a strong indication that insect minds are far more complicated than we imagine. There are lots of animals who play just for the purpose of enjoyment, but most examples come from young mammals and birds,” said Lars Chittka, a professor of sensory and behavioral ecology at Queen Mary University of London, who led the study.

The study’s first author. Samadi Galpay, who is a PhD student at Queen Mary University of London, states that it is more evident that bees may be capable of experiencing feelings. “They may actually experience some kind of positive emotional states, even if basic, like other larger animals do. This finding has effects on our understanding of the sense and welfare of insects, which, consequently, encourages us to respect and protect wildlife on Earth ever more,” she says.

“The dangerous thing about lying is people don’t understand how the act changes us,” says Dan Ariely, behavioural psychologist at Duke University. Psychologists have documented children lying as early as the age of two. Lying is even considered     1     developmental milestone, like crawling and walking, with sophisticated planning and attention     2     (require). But, for most people, lying gets increasingly limited as we develop a sense of morality and the ability to self-regulate.

According to Ariely, lying takes work. In studies, he gave subjects a chance to deceive for monetary gains while examining their brains in a functional MRI machine. Some people told the truth instantly. But others opted to lie, and they showed increased activity in their frontal parietal (颅腔壁的) control network, which is involved in complex thinking. It suggested that they were deciding between truth and dishonesty, and after thinking about it,     3     (choose) the latter. For a follow-up analysis, he found that people whose neural (神经的) reward centers were     4     (active) when they won money were less likely to be among the group of liars, and the opposite was seen among those so-called habitual liars, suggesting that lying     5     have to do with the inability to resist temptation.

External conditions also matter in terms of when and how often we lie. We are more likely to lie, research shows, when we see others being dishonest. And we are less likely to lie when we think others are watching. “We     6     a society need to understand that, when we don’t punish lying, we increase the probability of     7     happening again, influencing all of us,” Ariely said.

In a 2016 study, Ariely and colleagues showed how dishonesty alters people’s brains, making it easier to tell lies in the future. When people told a lie, the scientists noticed a burst of activity in their amygdala, a crucial part of the brain that produces fear and guilt. But when scientists had their subjects     8     (play) a game in which they won money by deceiving their partner, they noticed the negative signals from the amygdala began to decrease. “Not only that,” said Ariely in an interview with National Science Channel, “     9     people tended to lie more when they faced no consequences for dishonesty. This means that if you give people multiple opportunities to lie for their own benefit, they start with little lies,     10     get bigger over time.”

3 . From cottages surrounded by impressive gardens to days spent exploring sandy beaches and deep woods filled with wildlife, in My Family and Other Animals, English writer Gerald Durrell provided a vivid account of his family’s time on the Greek island of Corfu in the 1930s.

Come for the arresting descriptions of Corfu landscapes and stay for Durrell’s laugh-out-loud tales of his unusual family. This book, Durrell wrote humorously in the introduction, “was intended to be a nostalgic(怀旧的)account of natural history, but in the first few pages, I made the mistake of introducing my family.”

Durrell, later known for his zoo keeping and the preservation of wildlife, was just a child during his family’s five-year stay in Corfu. He is 10-year-old Gerry in the book—curious, passionate about animals and a detailed storyteller of his strange family: his imaginative elder brother Larry with his literary ambitions, lovestruck sister Margo, sporty brother Leslie and his ever-calm, loving mother.

Durrell’s attention to detail is what makes the book so winning, with every sight, sound and smell of the island brought to life. One minute you’ll be laughing as Larry’s clever literary friends walk down to the daffodil-yellow cottage, the next you’ll be catching your breath as Durrell describes swimming at night in the Ionian Sea: “Lying on my back in the silky water, staring at the sky, only moving my hands and feet slightly, I was looking at the Milky Way stretching like a silk scarf across the sky and wondering how many stars it contained.”

My Family and Other Animals is quite difficult to classify, being one part travel, one part autobiography, one part natural history, and one part comedy, with a thread of descriptive language running throughout that sometimes raises it nearly to poetry.

As a real delight to read, it’s the perfect literary escapism for any adult or older teenager who is currently walking down a tough road in life.

4 . “You’re so smart!” This encouraging response to children’s math performance is commonly heard. Recently, a new study, conducted by the University of Georgia, found that encouraging children with responses related to their personal characteristics or inborn abilities might weaken their math achievement over time.

Parents who make comments connecting their children’s performance with personal qualities like IQ are using what’s referred to as person responses. In contrast, parents who connect their children’s actions, such as efforts or strategy use, to their performance are using process responses.

For the study, researchers asked more than 500 parents to report on how they responded to their children’s math performance and their math beliefs and goals. Children were divided into two groups across a year to measure their math achievement.

The results show that parents who view math ability as changeable are more likely to give process responses focused on their children’s strategy use and efforts rather than their IQ or other personal qualities. In contrast, parents who believe math ability is unchangeable and that math failure can’t be constructive give more person responses. Parents with high expectations for their children give both responses. While responses focused on strategy and efforts are not related to any achievement results, children who receive more responses about their personal qualities — especially, related to failure — are more likely to avoid harder math problems, show higher levels of math anxiety, and score lower on math achievement tests.

Because person responses mean poor math change in children over time, researchers suggest parents limit this type of responses at home. Another recommendation for parents is to think about their own beliefs and goals for their kids and examine how these might lead them to respond in person or process ways. Simply telling parents to avoid talking about math ability may not be enough. Focusing less on how children perform and more on their strategy and enjoyment of math might be a more effective way to encourage children.

5 . Our school is looking for paid members to sit on the Student Advisory Board for Volunteering. The Board plays an important role in influencing the development and delivery of the volunteering service. Its aim is to find volunteering opportunities for students, teachers at school.

Volunteering, which has the potential to create positive social impact, is key to school. The Board will ensure that students’ needs are at the core of the service so that all King’s students can make a difference. This year, the Student Advisory Board for Volunteering’s topics include:

● Volunteering opportunities for the disabled. 

● Promotion of the Board’s service. 

● How to recognize and reward volunteers. 

● Comment on the Board’s work.

This is a unique and exciting opportunity open to all studying at school, no matter how much or how little you have volunteered. The Board will be run both online and in-person, and board members will be paid the London Living Wage (£11.95 per hour) via King’s TalentBank.

The application deadline is 23:59 on Friday, 31^st March 2023.

Apply via the form below, using your school email address.

10 . Why isn’t science better? Look at career incentives.

There are often substantial gaps between the idealized and actual versions of those people whose work involves providing a social good. Government officials are supposed to work for their constituents. Journalists are supposed to provide unbiased reporting and penetrating analysis. And scientists are supposed to relentlessly probe the fabric of reality with the most rigorous and skeptical of methods.

All too often, however, what should be just isn’t so. In a number of scientific fields, published findings turn out not to replicate (复制), or to have smaller effects than, what was initially claimed. Plenty of science does replicate — meaning the experiments turn out the same way when you repeat them — but the amount that doesn’t is too much for comfort.

But there are also ways in which scientists increase their chances of getting it wrong. Running studies with small samples, mining data for correlations and forming hypotheses to fit an experiment’s results after the fact are just some of the ways to increase the number of false discoveries.

It’s not like we don’t know how to do better. Scientists who study scientific methods have known about feasible remedies for decades. Unfortunately, their advice often falls on deaf ears. Why? Why aren’t scientific methods better than they are? In a word: incentives. But perhaps not in the way you think.

In the 1970s, psychologists and economists began to point out the danger in relying on quantitative measures for social decision-making. For example, when public schools are evaluated by students’ performance on standardized tests, teachers respond by teaching “to the test”. In turn, the test serves largely as of how well the school can prepare students for the test.

We can see this principle—often summarized as “when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure”—playing out in the realm of research. Science is a competitive enterprise. There are far more credentialed (授以证书的) scholars and researchers than there are university professorships or comparably prestigious research positions. Once someone acquires a research position, there is additional competition for tenure (终身教授) grant funding, and support and placement for graduate students. Due to this competition for resources, scientists must be evaluated and compared. How do you tell if someone is a good scientist?

An oft-used metric (标准，度量) is the number of publications one has in peer-reviewed journals, as well as the status of those journals. Metrics like these make it straightforward to compare researchers whose work may otherwise be quite different. Unfortunately, this also makes these numbers susceptible to exploitation.

If scientists are motivated to publish often and in high-impact journals, we might expect them to actively try to game the system (钻空子). And certainly, some do—as seen in recent high-profile cases of scientific fraud (欺诈). If malicious (恶意的) fraud is the prime concern, then perhaps the solution is simply heightened alertness.

However, most scientists are, I believe, genuinely interested in learning about the world, and honest. The problem with incentives is that they can shape cultural norms without any intention on the part of individuals.