1 . Open data-sharers are still in the minority in many fields. Although many researchers broadly agree that public access to raw data would accelerate science, most are reluctant to post the results of their own labours online.

Some communities have agreed to share online - geneticists, for example, post DNA sequences at the GenBank repository (库), and astronomers are accustomed to accessing images of galaxies and stars from, say, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, a telescope that has observed some 500 million objects- but these remain the exception, not the rule. Historically, scientists have objected to sharing for many reasons: it is a lot of work; until recently, good databases did not exist; grant funders were not pushing for sharing; it has been difficult to agree on standards for formatting data and there is no agreed way to assign credit for data.

But the barriers are disappearing in part because journals and funding agencies worldwide are encouraging scientists to make their data public. Last year, the Roval Society in London said in its report Science as an Open Enterprise that scientists need to shift away from a research culture where data is viewed as private preserve. Funding agencies note that data paid for with public money should be public information, and the scientific community is recognizing that data can now be shared digitally in ways that were not possible before. To match the growing demand, services are springing up to make it easier to publish research products online and enable other researchers to discover and cite them.

Although calls to share data often concentrate on the moral advantages of sharing, the practice is not purely altruistic (利他主义的). Researchers who share get plenty of personal benefits, including more connections with colleagues, improved visibility and increased citations. I he most successful sharers-those whose data are downloaded and cited the most often-get noticed, and their work gets used. For example, one of the most popular data sets on multidisciplinary repository Dryad is about wood density around the world; it has been downloaded 5, 700 times. Co-author Amy Zanne thinks that users probably range from climate- change researchers wanting to estimate how much carbon is stored in biomass, to foresters looking for information on different grades of timber. “I would much prefer to have my data used by the maximum number of people to ask their own questions, ” she says. “It’s important to allow readers and reviewers to see exactly how you arrive at your results. Publishing data and code allows your science to be reproducible”

Even people whose data are less popular can benefit. By making the effort to organize and label files so others can understand them, scientists become more organized and better disciplined themselves, thus avoiding confusion later on.

5 . Here’s the deal: you’re as hungry as a horse and you want a delicious meal from a fine restaurant, but you’re a little low on funds.

So what do you do? If you happen to live in Europe, the answer is as easy as pie: you pull out your smart phone or tablet, and tap Too Good To Go, Europe’s most popular app. Approximately 23,000 restaurants and food sellers post their leftover offerings on the app for half their usual cost.

Why all this incredible generosity? Unbelievably, one-third of the world’s food is thrown away, and nearly one billion people don’t have enough to eat. Besides, burning wasted food releases harmful carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere, which contributes to climate change. That’s why environment-minded companies around the world are creating apps for phones, tablets, and other smart devices that connect uneaten food with people who want or need it.

After a long day at work, Anne, a 34-year-old student, pulls out her smart phone and chooses a noodle dish —pasta with mushrooms. Then she heads to a restaurant on the banks of the Spree River, where the owner packs her dinner and also offers her a spoon of free icecream, which is a reward for bringing her own container.

Indeed, there are many programmes serving the same mission around the world. In America, people are using an app called Food for All. One hour before a restaurant closes, its staff can post leftover meals to the app for up to 80 percent off menu prices. The app also allows customers to donate leftover meals to others.

In the Netherlands, 77,000 people have downloaded an app called No Food Wasted. This programme allows grocery store workers to share products that are approaching their expiration dates with customers who might need them.

Some countries are taking their commitment to reducing food waste a step further. France and the Czech Republic, for example, have laws that prohibit restaurants and grocery stores from throwing away food. Instead, workers are required to donate that food to charity.

So think about if there might be a better use for your uneaten vegetables. The planet will thank you.

7 . Tiredness May Lead to Snacking

Staying up late doing homework is always tiring. Perhaps when we are tired, we feel the need to eat unhealthy snack food. Recently scientists have been investigating tiredness and snack food.

According to a study in the Journal of Neuroscience, people are more likely to crave snacks when they don’t get enough sleep.

For the study, researchers from University of Cologne in Germany gave the same dinner to 32 healthy men aged between 19 and 33. Half of the men were then sent home to bed, and the other half were kept aware in the laboratory all night.

The next morning, the participants were asked to consider how much they would be willing to pay for snack food items shown to them in pictures.

According to the researchers, all were similarly hungry in the morning, and had similar levels of most hormones and blood sugar.

However, brain scans showed that when the sleep-deprived participants looked at the pictures of junk food, they released more of the “hunger hormone”. This is the hormone responsible for increasing the appetite, and making us consume more.

Asked about how much they would pay for snacks, “participants with sleep deprivation were more willing to overspend on food items than those with a good night’s sleep,” researchers said.

Researchers also observed that among the people who hadn’t slept, there was greater activity in the part of the brain where food rewards are processed.

Scientists think that sleep-deprived people experience changes to the hunger hormone and the brain’s reward system that leads to a stronger desire to eat snacks with high fat and calories.

“This brings us a little closer to understanding the mechanism behind how sleep deprivation changes food valuation,” Professor Jan Peters, a co-author of the study from the University of Cologne, told The Independent.

Listen to some soft music to relieve your tiredness.

Do some slight exercise for a short time when you’re tired.

Eat yogurt or fruits to replace snacks with high fat and calories.

Distance yourself from the craving.

8 . ①We have a problem, and the strange thing is that we not only know about it but also celebrate it. Just today, someone boasted to me that she was so busy she’s averaged four hours of sleep a night for the last two weeks. She wasn’t complaining; she was proud of the fact. She is not alone.

②Why are typically rational (理智的) people so irrational in their behavior? The answer is that we’re in the midst of a bubble. I call it “The More Bubble.”

③The nature of bubbles is that something is absurdly overvalued until-eventually-the bubble bursts, and we’re left wondering why we were so irrationally animated in the first place. The thing we’re overvaluing now is the opinion of doing it all, having it all, achieving it all.

④This bubble is being enabled by a combination of three powerful trends: smart phones, social media, and extreme consumerism. The result is not just information overload, but opinion overload. We are more aware than at any time in history of what everyone else is doing and therefore, what we should be doing. In the process, we have been sold a bill of goods: that success means being supermen and superwomen who can get it all done. Of course we boasted about being busy—it’s code for being successful and important.

⑤And our answer to the problem of more is always more. We need more technology to help us create more technologies. We need to shift our workload to free up our own time to do yet even more.

⑥Luckily, there is a solution to the pursuit of more: the pursuit of less, but better. A growing number of people are making this change. I call these people Essentialists.

⑦These people are designing their lives around what is essential and removing everything else. These people arrange to have actual weekends (during which they are not working). They create technology-free zones in their homes. They trade time on Facebook with calling those few friends who really matter to them. Instead of running to different meetings, they put space on their calendars to get important work done.

⑧So we have two choices: we can be among the last people caught up in “The More Bubble” or we can join the growing community of Essentialists and get more of what matters in our one precious life.

9 . In Japan many workers for large corporations have a guarantee of lifetime employment. They will not be laid off during recessions or when the tasks they perform. are taken over by robots. To some observers, this is capitalism at its best, because workers are treated as people not things. Others see it as necessarily inefficient and believe it cannot continue if Japan is to remain competitive with foreign corporations more concerned about profits and less concerned about people.

Defenders of the system argue that those who call it inefficient do not understand how it really works. In the first place not every Japanese worker has the guarantee of a lifetime job. The lifetime employment system includes only “regular employees”. Many employees do not fall into this category, including all women. All businesses have many part-time and temporary employees. These workers are hired and laid off during the course of the business cycle just as employees in the United States are. These “irregular workers” make up about 10 percent of the nonagricultural work force. Additionally, Japanese firms maintain some flexibility through the extensive use of subcontractors. This practice is much more common in Japan than in the United States.

The use of both subcontractors and temporary workers has increased markedly in Japan since the 1974 — 1975 recession. All this leads some to argue that the Japanese system is not all that different from the American system. During recessions Japanese corporations lay off temporary workers and give less business to subcontractors. In the United States, corporations lay off those workers with the least seniority. The difference then is probably less than the term “lifetime employment” suggests, but there still is a difference. And this difference cannot be understood without looking at the values of Japanese society. The relationship between employer and employee cannot be explained in purely contractual terms. Firms hold on to the employees and employees stay with one firm. There are also practical reasons for not jumping from job to job. Most retirement benefits come from the employer. Changing jobs means losing these benefits. Also, teamwork is an essential part of Japanese production. Moving to a new firm means adapting to a different team and at least temporarily, lower productivity and lower pay.