FOBO, or Fear of a Better Option, is the anxiety that something better will come along, which makes it undesirable to commit to existing choices when making a decision. It's an affliction of abundance that drives you to keep all of your options open and to avoid risks. Rather than assessing your options, choosing one, and moving on with your day, you delay the inevitable. It's not unlike hitting the snooze button on your alarm clock only to pull the covers over your head and fall back asleep. As you probably found out the hard way, if you hit snooze enough times, you'll end up being late and racing for the office, your day and mood ruined. While pressing snooze feels so good at the moment, it ultimately demands a price.

Each species of animals can detect a different range of odours. No species can detect all the molecules that are present in the environment in which it lives ― there are some things that we cannot smell but which some other animals can, and vice versa. There are also differences between individuals, relating to the ability to smell an odour, or how pleasant it seems. For example, some people like the taste of coriander ― known as cilantro in the USA ― while others find it soapy and unpleasant. This effect has an underlying genetic component due to differences in the genes controlling our sense of smell. Ultimately, the selection of scents detected by a given species, and how that odour is perceived, will depend upon the animal's ecology. The response profile of each species will enable it to locate sources of smell that are relevant to it and to respond accordingly.

There is nothing more fundamental to the human spirit than the need to be mobile. It is the intuitive force that sparks our imaginations and opens pathways to life-changing opportunities. It is the catalyst for progress and personal freedom. Public transportation has been vital to that progress and freedom for more than two centuries. The transportation industry has always done more than carry travelers from one destination to another. It connects people, places, and possibilities. It provides access to what people need, what they love, and what they aspire to become. In so doing, it grows communities, creates jobs, strengthens the economy, expands social and commercial networks, saves time and energy, and helps millions of people achieve a better life.

As much as we can learn by examining fossils, it is important to remember that they seldom tell the entire story. Things only fossilize under certain sets of conditions. Modern insect communities are highly diverse in tropical forests, but the recent fossil record captures little of that diversity. Many creatures are consumed entirely or decompose rapidly when they die, so there may be no fossil record at all for important groups. It's a bit similar to a family photo album. Maybe when you were born your parents took lots of pictures, but over the years they took photographs occasionally, and sometimes they got busy and forgot to take pictures at all. Very few of us have a complete photo record of our life. Fossils are just like that. Sometimes you get very clear pictures of the past, while at other times there are big gaps, and you need to notice what they are.

Back in 1996, an American airline was faced with an interesting problem. At a time when most other airlines were losing money or going under, over 100 cities were begging the company to service their locations. However, that's not the interesting part. What's interesting is that the company turned down over 95 percent of those offers and began serving only four new locations. It turned down tremendous growth because company leadership had set an upper limit for growth. Sure, its executives wanted to grow each year, but they didn't want to grow too much. Unlike other famous companies, they wanted to set their own pace, one that could be sustained in the long term. By doing this, they established a safety margin for growth that helped them continue to thrive at a time when the other airlines were flailing.

Even though two variables seem to be related, there may not be a causal relationship. In fact, the two variables may merely seem to be associated with each other due to the effect of some third variable. Sociologists call such misleading relationships spurious. A classic example is the apparent association between children's shoe size and reading ability. It seems that as shoe size increases, reading ability improves. Does this mean that the size of one's feet (independent variable) causes an improvement in reading skills (dependent variable)? Certainly not. This false relationship is caused by a third factor, age, that is related to shoe size as well as reading ability. Hence, when researchers attempt to make causal claims about the relationship between an independent and a dependent variable, they must control for ― or rule out ― other variables that may be creating a spurious relationship.

Daylight isn't the only signal that the brain can use for the purpose of biological clock resetting, though it is the principal and preferential signal, when present. So long as they are reliably repeating, the brain can also use other external cues, such as food, exercise, and even regularly timed social interaction. All of these events have the ability to reset the biological clock, allowing it to strike a precise twenty-four-hour note. It is the reason that individuals with certain forms of blindness do not entirely lose their circadian rhythm. Despite not receiving light cues due to their blindness, other phenomena act as their resetting triggers. Any signal that the brain uses for the purpose of clock resetting is termed a zeitgeber, from the German time giver or synchronizer. Thus, while light is the most reliable and thus the primary zeitgeber, there are many factors that can be used in addition to, or in the absence of, daylight.

Earlier agricultural systems were integrated with and co-evolved with technologies, beliefs, myths and traditions as part of an integrated social system. Generally, people planted a variety of crops in different areas, in the hope of obtaining a reasonably stable food supply. These systems could only be maintained at low population levels, and were relatively non-destructive (but not always). More recently, agriculture has in many places lost its local character, and has become incorporated into the global economy. This has led to increased pressure on agricultural land for exchange commodities and export goods. More land is being diverted from local food production to cash crops for export and exchange; fewer types of crops are raised, and each crop is raised in much greater quantities than before. Thus, ever more land is converted from forest (and other natural systems) for agriculture for export, rather than using land for subsistence crops.