3 . On streets all around the world today, people are performing. Musicians sing or play instruments while other people may juggle (玩杂耍), dance or mime. Some perform as living statues, standing perfectly still in costumes and makeup designed to make them look like statues. Artists perform out in the open, allowing people to enjoy their art for free.     1    .

For up-and-coming artists, busking (街头卖艺), or street performance, is a great way to spread awareness of their talent. They may leave business cards out when they perform or sell CDs. Busking is also a way to practice playing in front of a crowd.     2    .

It’s important for street performers to think carefully about where they’ll perform. Obviously, places with more people mean they can earn more money. A covered spot will keep the performers comfortable, out of the sun and the rain, But they need to avoid blocking shop entrances. And in some cities, certain artists have places where they typically perform. New performers should respect them and wait until they’re done to set up there.     3    , telling each other when they’ll finish up or even saving each other places.

If you’re a musician and want to busk, have a variety of songs ready. This is especially important if you're performing in front of a shop or a seating area. Playing the same three songs over and over will get annoying really quickly. One performer recommends having at least an hour’s worth of music prepared.

Finally, have fun. Remember to look up, smile and interact with your audience wherever you are.     4    .

4 . In recent years, the food industry has increased its use of labels. Whether the labels say “non-GMO” or “no sugar,” or “zero carbohydrates”, consumers are increasingly demanding more information about what’s in their food. One report found that 39 percent of consumers would switch from the brands they currently buy to others that provide clearer, more accurate product information. Food manufacturers are responding to the report with new labels to meet that demand, and they’re doing so with an eye towards giving their products an advantage over the competition, and bolstering profits.

This strategy makes intuitive sense. If consumers say they want transparency, tell them exactly what is in your product. That is simply supplying a certain demand. But the marketing strategy in response to this consumer demand has gone beyond articulating what is in a product, to labeling what is NOT in the food. These labels are known as “absence claims” labels, and they represent an emerging labeling trend that is detrimental both to the consumers who purchase the products and the industry that supplies them.

For example, Hunt’s put a “non-GMO” label on its canned crushed tomatoes a few years ago — despite the fact that at the time there was no such thing as a GMO tomato on the market. Some dairy companies are using the “non-GMO” label on their milk, despite the fact that all milk is naturally GMO-free, another label that creates unnecessary fear around food.

While creating labels that play on consumer fears and misconceptions about their food may give a company a temporary marketing advantage over competing products on the grocery aisle, in the long term this strategy will have just the opposite effect: by injecting fear into the discourse about our food, we run the risk of eroding consumer trust in not just a single product, but the entire food business.

Eventually, it becomes a question in consumers, minds: Were these foods ever safe? By purchasing and consuming these types of products, have I already done some kind of harm to my family or the planet?

For food manufacturers, it will mean damaged consumer trust and lower sales for everyone. And this isn’t just supposition. A recent study found that absence claims labels can create a stigma around foods even when there is no scientific evidence that they cause harm.

It’s clear that food manufacturers must tread carefully when it comes to using absence claims. In addition to the likely negative long-term impact on sales, this verbal trick sends a message that innovations in farming and food processing are unwelcome, eventually leading to less efficiency, fewer choices for consumers, and ultimately, more costly food products. If we allow this kind of labeling to continue, we will all lose.

5 . In July, a big study came out in the journal JAMA. It was titled “Association of Screen Time and Depression in Adolescence.” This big headline seemed to confirm what a lot of people have been saying—that screen time is horrible for young people.

The study followed over 3,800 adolescents over four years. Part of what the investigators measured was the teens’ amount of screen time, including time spent on social media, as well as their levels of depression symptoms. One of their main findings was that higher amounts of social media use were associated with higher levels of depression. That was true both when the researches compared between people and compared each person against their own mental health over time. Case closed? Not so fast. Let’s take a closer look at this and other studies, and ask ourselves: What exactly is the relationship between social media use and depression? It turns out there are several caveats.

Caveat #1: The association between social media use and depression is, on average, tiny.

In this big JAMA study, the investigators compared social media use and depression between teens and found that those who used social media more had higher depression scores. Specifically, for every hour per day that one teen spent on social media more than her peers, she likely had a 0.64-point higher depression score. Within each teen, increasing their daily social media use by 1 hour was also associated with a 0.41-point increase to their own depression score. You may be asking, “But what does a 0.64-point increase mean? How much more depression is that?” Depression was measured on a 28-point scale, so these less-than-one-point increases are tiny.

Caveat #2: Not everybody has the same relationship with social media.

A different study published in 2018 identified five distinct types of social media users, and the take-home finding was that “problematic social media use” was one of the main themes for people whose mental health was affected by social media. What makes for “problematic” use? The researchers adapted the Bergen Facebook Addiction Scale to cover all forms of social media. It includes questions like, “You use Facebook in order to forget about personal problems” and “You have tried to cut down on the use of Facebook without success.” These sound similar to questions about other types of addiction like alcoholism. You can have alcohol in your life without it being a problem, or your alcohol use may become problematic. It’s the same with social media.

Caveat #3: We don’t know if it’s really social media use causing depression.

There’s one important thing to remember about survey research—just because two things happen together, it’s not necessarily true that one causes the other. Another possibility is that something else entirely is causing some people to have both high levels of depression and social media use. For example, one interesting study shows that childhood maltreatment was associated with greater current social media use. It’s not hard to imagine that people mistreated in childhood also had higher levels of depression. In this case, depression may have nothing to do with how much someone is using social media.

6 . When you are little, it’s not hard to believe you can change the world. I remember my enthusiasm when, at the age of 12, I addressed the people at the Rio Earth Summit. “I am only a child,” I told them. “Yet I know that if all the money spent on war was spent on ending poverty and finding environmental answers, what a wonderful place this world would be. In school you teach us not to fight with others, to work things out, to respect others, to clean up our mess, not to hurt other creatures, to share. not to be greedy. Then why do you go out and do the thing you tell us not to do? You grown-ups say you love us, but I challenge you, please, to make our actions reflect your words.”

I spoke for six minutes and received a standing ovation. Some of the delegates even cried. I thought that maybe I had reached some of them, that my speech might actually spur (激励) action. Now, ten years from Rio, after I’ve sat through many more conferences, I’m not sure what has been accomplished. My confidence in the people in power and in the power of an individual’s voice to reach them has been deeply shaken.

When I was little, the world was simple. But as a young adult, I’m learning that as we have to make choices-education, career, lifestyle-life gets more and more complicated. We are beginning to feel pressure to produce and be successful. We are taught that economic growth is progress, but aren’t taught how to pursue a happy, healthy or sustainable (可持续的) way of living. And we are learning that what we wanted for the future when we were 12 was ideal and innocent.

Today I’m no longer a child, but I’m worried about what kind of environment my children will grow up in. I know change is possible, because I am changing, still figuring out what I think. I am still deciding how to live my life. The challenges are great, but if we accept individual responsibility and make sustainable choices, we will rise to the challenges, and we will become part of the positive tide of change.

8 . “Walkability” linked to reduced hospital costs and admissions

​Neighborhoods designed to encourage people to walk to and from the shops and public transport will help reduce hospital costs and admissions linked to residents, new Canberra research shows.

The research project, from the University of Canberra’s Health Research Institute, has revealed a relationship between a suburb’s “walkability score” and a reduction in both hospital costs and admissions and added to the growing debate surrounding the role of “social determinants” in health outcomes.

Coauthors Dr. Yan Yu and Vincent Learnihan studied ACT Health data from 30,690 hospital admissions across 88 of the ACT’s suburbs, and then matched them against each suburb’s “walkability score”. That score is a measure of how easy it is to get around a particular suburb, including the number of interconnected streets, footpaths and the presence of shops, public transport stops, restaurants and services within walking distance of each other.

Dr. Yu said the study showed that those suburbs rated as “walkable”—with a walkability score of 20 units or more—were linked to a 12.1 per cent lower hospital cost for those residents and a 12.5 per cent lower rate of hospital admissions.

She said the admissions data they focused on included cancers, cardiovascular diseases, endocrine, nutritional and metabolic diseases and diabetes.

But the research also showed that in Canberra, some 80 per cent of all the city’s suburbs were still “car-dependent”, which Mr. Learnihan said showed more needed to be done to help encourage Canberrans to walk, ride and use public transport.

While Mr. Learnihan commended the ACT government’s existing “active travel” programs, he said the study showed that wider and better funded initiatives to improve the “walkability” of new and existing suburbs could help save on health costs and improve Canberrans’ quality of life.

Dr. Yu said such changes could be as simple as improving footpaths and bike paths, increasing public transport access and improving local shops.

10 . The Science Behind Why We Take Selfies

The selfie has arguably become the greatest photographic trend of our time. Why are we so interested in taking and sharing selfies and how does observing an image of yourself differ from observing a picture of someone else, asks University College London neuroscientist James Kilner.

    1     Indeed, reading and responding correctly to other people’s facial expressions is essential for successful social interactions.

Through our lifetimes we become experts at recognizing and interpreting other people's faces and fanical expressions. In contrast we have very little experience of looking at our own faces.

Our perception of our own facial expression comes from our sense of feeling our faces move.     2     For example, it has been demonstrated that when people are shown an image of themselves and asked to match it they are unable to accurately produce the same facial expression without being able to see themselves.

    3     When people are asked to pick a photograph which they think looks most like them—from a series of photographs in which an actual photograph has been digitally altered to produce more attractive and less attractive versions—people are very bad at selecting the original photograph.

Given that we have a poor representation of what we look life, this is perhaps unsurprising.    4    .

In other words, we have an image of ourselves that tends to be younger and more attractive than we actually are.

This might in part explain our obsession with selfies. For the first time we are able to take and retake pictures, of ourselves until we can produce an image that comes to matching our perception of what we think we look like.