1 . Teenagers are perhaps those who are most susceptible (易受影响的) to peer pressure. In simple terms, peer pressure is what drives you to do something, whether it is negative or positive, in order to feel liked and respected by your peers.

We’re constantly warned against peer pressure, given its negative connotation (含义). It’s often the main cause that makes you give in when someone tries to convince you to skip school with them, or to try and get away with cheating, stealing, etc.

On the other hand, however, peer pressure has the capacity to have a positive influence over young lives. We go to volunteering events when our friends do. We study more when we hear that our friends got high marks on the last exam. We go to the gym because we see our friends getting more fit and want to become more physically attractive or healthy ourselves.

So how do we cultivate a culture of positive peer pressure? The examples listed above are bonded together by a pair of common themes: friendly competitiveness and egalitarianism (平等主义).

As children we were motivated by our teachers to obtain as many stars for our good behavior as we could possibly get. This worked because as humans, we love to have a feeling of accomplishment, especially when competing against those with relatively equal abilities and capacities. We’re negatively reinforced to work harder when we’re falling behind because we want to keep up and not get left behind. As long as the competition doesn’t grow to be too aggressively fierce, and as long as the playing field between competitors is relatively equal, this kind of competition can promote and improve the frequency of good behavior. Even if we’re not the winner, we still want to be on the same level as most so as not to feel left out.

In my opinion, one of the most impressive things in my high school was the positive peer pressure we experienced against drunk driving. People planned out who the designated driver would be before a party and saw him or her as someone to be respected. Likewise, if someone planned on drinking without having someone that was sober (清醒的) who could drive them home, the host would sometimes let that person drive to the party and sleep over with their car parked in the driveway.

Above all else, what most adolescents want, and frankly crave, is acceptance. Since the definition of what is “cool” and what is not is malleable (有延展性的) and within our control, we can create a culture of positive peer pressure that promotes values that are in our own best interests, and that starts with how each of us acts individually

2 . Have you ever witnessed the astonishing beauty of auroras (极光)? They are a gift from the heavens resulting from the interaction between the atmosphere and cosmic radiation.

However, as the saying goes: One man’s meat is another man’s poison. In South Korea, a flight attendant, 53, died from cancer due to prolonged exposure to intense cosmic radiation, determined a South Korean labor court.

According to South Korean authorities, the flight attendant logged an average of 1, 022 annual flying hours throughout his career, with half of his flights spent crossing the regions in and around the North Pole, where cosmic radiation reaches extraordinarily high levels.

Cosmic radiation, which comes from the sun and other stars in the galaxy, is constantly hitting Earth. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, cosmic radiation can be divided into two types: solar radiation and galactic cosmic radiation. Solar radiation comprises charged particles emitted by the sun, known as the solar wind, while galactic cosmic radiation comes from the remnants (残余部分) of supernovas (超新星) - powerful explosions created during the last life stages of massive stars.

Despite the continuous and powerful nature of cosmic radiation, we are generally shielded from their worst effects. Earth’s magnetic field and atmosphere provide protection from this radiation, with the magnetic field being strongest in tropical areas and weakest at the poles. Consequently, individuals living in higher latitudes, like Heilongjiang province, experience slightly more cosmic radiation than those in lower latitudes, such as Hainan province. Moreover, at higher altitudes, such as when passengers are flying on an airplane, the thinner atmosphere results in more intense exposure to cosmic radiation.

For astronauts and flight attendants on polar routes, lacking the shielding offered by Earth’s magnetic field and atmosphere exposes them to potential health risks. According to NASA, astronauts who spend six months in space encounter a radiation exposure roughly equivalent to undergoing 1,000 chest X-rays.

However, what makes cosmic radiation dangerous also holds therapeutic (治疗的) potential. The high speed and energy of cosmic radiation have provided insights into treating tumors (肿瘤). Scientists can now artificially produce charged particles similar to cosmic radiation. Compared to conventional radiotherapy (放疗), charged particles can target tumors more effectively with less harm to the surrounding healthy tissues, according to the journal Frontiers in Oncology.

3 . Yesterday, I was standing in line at a store and the song Please Come to Boston which was quite popular when I was in high school, came on in the background. I hadn’t heard it for years. Suddenly, I was overcome by flashbacks of people and places linked to that song from earlier stages of my life.

It seems people tend to be extremely nostalgic (怀旧的) about the music they listened to when they were young. Psychological research has shown that autobiographical memories (life experiences) from certain time periods are remembered better than others. One obvious phenomenon is the “reminiscence bump” (记忆隆起): the fact that people tend to recall memories from when they were 10 to 30 years old much better. That’s because this period contains many novel and self-defining life experiences such as graduation and marriage. Biological changes may also boost the effectiveness of our memories from this period.

In our experiment, we investigated the presence of the “musical reminiscence bump” in a group of 470 adults aged 18 to 82. Our aim was to examine how a person’s age when a song was popular affected three related but distinct concepts: the degree to which the song was associated with autobiographical memories, how familiar the song was and how much they liked the song. Participants were shown the titles and artists of 111 pop songs that had featured in the charts across a 65-year period (1950~2015). After a given time, they were asked to complete the measurement.

We discovered music during one’s adolescence was rated as more familiar. In addition, we found some songs were preferred regardless of a participant’s age. For instance, we saw a general increase in how much people liked songs from the late 1970s to early 1980s, even in participants who weren’t yet born during that time period. Examples of songs we used from this time period include Hotel California by the Eagles.

Music can undeniably cause nostalgia. For example, advertisers want to elicit (引出) a nostalgic reaction from a certain group of consumers. And they should notice doctors who aim to reconnect patients suffering from memory loss with self-defining memories from their pasts can also take advantage of nostalgia.

4 . Many parents of both boys and girls have witnessed striking differences in the way their kids use technology, with their sons generally gravitating to videogames and their daughters often spending more of their screen time scrolling through social media. Emerging research indicates that brain differences between males and females help account for the split.

Marc Potenza, a professor at Yale University, teamed up with researchers at universities in China to find out why. Using functional MRIs, which measure brain activity by detecting changes in blood flow, the team studied neural responses in young male and female gamers, particularly in the parts of the brain associated with reward processing and craving --a motivating factor in addiction. When the men and women were shown photos of people playing videogames, those parts of the men’s brains showed higher levels of activation than those parts of the women’s brains.

Brain regions that have been implicated in drug-addiction studies also were shown to be more highly activated in the men after gaming. The researchers said the results suggest men could be more biologically prone (有倾向的) than women to developing internet gaming disorder.

But girls and women aren’t free from problems when it comes to digital media. Data from Pew shows that, in general, women use social platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest far more than men. Many girls and women are drawn to those photo-sharing sites because they like to form bonds and find similarities, says Rosanna

Guadagno, a social psychologist at Stanford University. Some recent studies show that girls feel the ill effects of too much social media use, such as depression and anxiety, more than boys do.

Researchers at the University of Zurich looked at how differences in brain functioning can help explain why women tend to be more prosocial—that is, helpful, generous and cooperative—than men. In the 2017 study, they hypothesized that the areas of women’s brains related to reward processing are more active when they share rewards and that those areas in men are more active when receiving, selfish rewards. Brain scans conducted on men and women, in which they chose between receiving a monetary reward only for themselves or one that involved sharing money with others, supported their theory.

Scientists say understanding those differences is critical to parents’ ability to help kids navigate the fast-changing world of tech.

5 . We sometimes think that everything was much better and easier in the past. It’s one of the tricks our minds play on us, especially when we are in low spirits.

Actually, it’s unlikely that things were objectively better in the past. This form of thinking is called rosy retrospection, which is a well-studied cognitive bias. It happens because when we think about the past, we are more likely to focus on positive generalities than annoying details.

If you think back to a holiday with your family five years ago, you’re likely to recall the beautiful views rather than the uncomfortable bed. In other words, the negative details disappear from our memory over time while the positive ones remain.

Rosy retrospection can influence how we make decisions, and it’s one of the reasons why we easily return into problematic relationships. The longer it is since we experienced the negative influence of a relationship, the more likely we are to let the good memories outweigh the bad memories and to perhaps forgive unforgivable behavior. It’s always a good idea to review our nostalgic (怀旧的) feelings with a healthy degree of doubt.

But rosy retrospection does serve an important purpose. It keeps us in a positive state of mind in the present and is important to our psychological wellbeing. In fact, people who tend to remember negative experiences more than positive ones are likely to exhibit psychological disorders. Research generally suggests that our happiest days are still to come. And even if they’re not, it’s still important to believe that they are. Don’t shy away from looking upon the past with a certain degree of nostalgia. But, for the same reason, don’t use the past as an excuse to be unhappy in the present.

7 . Kids and teens are often dismissive of praise from their parents. I am sure that parents out there can relate to this, as we all have been told at one time or another by one or several of our kids, “Stop it, Mom.” or even, “You’re just saying that because you are my parents, and you have to say that.” I can assure you, though, that they are listening. They will probably not thank you for this praise until they are in their twenties, but don’t let that stop you from praising them during their childhood and teen years. Just be careful how you praise them. A little praise may go a long way-especially if it is the right kind of praise.

It appears that the way to go is to praise their efforts according to a study by Brummelman of Utrecht University in the Netherlands and his colleagues. These researchers concluded that kids should be praised primarily for their efforts, rather than for their personal characteristics, because if they are praised for their efforts, then a poor performance is more likely to be seen as a glitch (小故障), rather than a valid reflection of who they are as individuals.

Let’s think about this together. If you are a teenager or a child of any age and are constantly told how brilliant you are, then when you do poorly on a test or a few tests, you may feel like you have suddenly lost your status as brilliant and may now feel ashamed that you are merely average or even dumb. If you are a girl who is constantly being told how beautiful you are, then on a day when you don’t look or feel so good, you may decide that you are unattractive. This is the problem that develops when we are praising our kids for global personality characteristics that they can’t always live up to.

10 . The world is full of advice on how to get a good night’s sleep, but sometimes doing so just isn’t possible. If you are struggling with a sleep disorder, are a shift worker or have a baby who. wakes every few hours, being told how to sleep well can be annoying. For others, despite feeling exhausted all day, a fourth episode of your favorite TV series can seem more appealing than going to bed.

How do you know if you are sleep-deprived? For some people, the answer will be obvious; for others, it may be less so. Russell Foster, a professor at the University of Oxford, specifies three signs that you are probably not getting enough sleep: “Feeling that you don’t perform at your peak during the day; oversleeping on free days; or craving (渴望得到) a nap during the day.”

“Lack of good sleep can cause an imbalance in your appetite hormones,” says Martin Meadows, a registered dietitian: “The hormone ghrelin, which causes you to feel hungry, increases and the hormone leptin, which signals that you are full; decreases.”

As Meadows says: “It’s a perfect storm where we want to eat more and we don’t know when to stop, combined with the fact that when we are sleep-deprived our willpower is lower, arid it all becomes pretty tricky. Poor sleep, or sleep deprivation (匮乏), leads to an increased likelihood of poor lifestyle choices. Many of us get stuck in the habit of eating junk food, and the knock-on effect is that the junk food disturbs our sleep, because it’s higher in sugar; it’s more stimulating.”

“Short term, you can get away with the negative influence of sleep deprivation of you,” says Foster. “It’s in the long term that things start to fall apart.” He catalogues the ill effects: “Your cognitive performance. drops with accumulated sleep deprivation—your communication skills, your decision-making skills, your memory.” There is also an increased risk of cardiovascular (心血管的) disease, depression and psychosis.

Fortunately, according to Meadows, most of us could do with an extra hour to an hour and a half of sleep each night to cope with sleep deprivation. And if you had a bad night’s sleep, Meadows recommends “making a conscious effort to choose foods such as wholegrains, beans, fruits and vegetables. Because they are packed with fiber and water, they will help you feel full while limiting your overall energy intake.”