Although we don't know the full neurological effects of digital technologies on young children's development, we do know that all screen time is not created equal. For example, reading an e-book, videoconferencing with grandma, or showing your child a picture you just took of them is not the same as the passive, television-watching screen time that concerns many parents and educators. So, rather than focusing on how much children are interacting with screens, parents and educators are turning their focus instead to what children are interacting with and who is talking with them about their experiences. Though parents may be tempted to hand a child a screen and walk away, guiding children's media experiences helps them build important 21st Century skills, such as critical thinking and media literacy.

The development of writing was pioneered not by gossips, storytellers, or poets, but by accountants. The earliest writing system has its roots in the Neolithic period, when humans first began to switch from hunting and gathering to a settled lifestyle based on agriculture. This shift began around 9500 B.C. in a region known as the Fertile Crescent, which stretches from modern-day Egypt, up to southeastern Turkey, and down again to the border between Iraq and Iran. Writing seems to have evolved in this region from the custom of using small clay pieces to account for transactions involving agricultural goods such as grain, sheep, and cattle. The first written documents, which come from the Mesopotamian city of Uruk and date back to around 3400 B.C., record amounts of bread, payment of taxes, and other transactions using simple symbols and marks on clay tablets.

A Princeton study by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman found that once a person earns $75,000 per year, the emotional benefits of income wear off. He analyzed more than 450,000 responses to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index, a daily survey of 1,000 U.S. residents conducted by the Gallup Organization, and discovered that emotional well-being rises with income—but not beyond an annual income of $75,000. What is the significance of $75,000? It's not a magic number. It appears to be the income considered "adequate" to meet people's basic needs. And the researchers found that lower income did not in itself cause sadness, but made people feel more burdened by the problems they already had. In other words, that old saying "money can't buy happiness" turns out to be true.

We create a picture of the world using the examples that most easily come to mind. This is foolish, of course, because in reality, things don't happen more frequently just because we can imagine them more easily. Thanks to this prejudice, we travel through life with an incorrect risk map in our heads. Thus, we overestimate the risk of being the victims of a plane crash, a car accident, or a murder. And we underestimate the risk of dying from less spectacular means, such as diabetes or stomach cancer. The chances of bomb attacks are much rarer than we think, and the chances of suffering depression are much higher. We attach too much likelihood to spectacular, flashy, or loud outcomes. Anything silent or invisible we downgrade in our minds. Our brains imagine impressive outcomes more readily than ordinary ones.

Many parents do not understand why their teenagers occasionally behave in an irrational or dangerous way. At times, it seems like teens don't think things through or fully consider the consequences of their actions. Adolescents differ from adults in the way they behave, solve problems, and make decisions. There is a biological explanation for this difference. Studies have shown that brains continue to mature and develop throughout adolescence and well into early adulthood. Scientists have identified a specific region of the brain that is responsible for immediate reactions including fear and aggressive behavior. This region develops early. However, the frontal cortex, the area of the brain that controls reasoning and helps us think before we act, develops later. This part of the brain is still changing and maturing well into adulthood.

Do you have a tendency to focus more on what you don't have than on what you do? Unfortunately, many people tend to focus on what they don't have, when in reality they are sitting on a pile of blessings! Unrealistic expectations and comparisons to others lead to jealousy. Being envious of what others have only serves to make you unhappy with what you personally have. It's hard to be grateful when all you can think about is what you don't have or think you should get. Oftentimes frustration and dissatisfaction are actually the result of unrealistic expectations on our part. We think our situation should be this way or that way, or at least different from the way it is. Gratitude is not about expectations, but about being thankful for our situation no matter what our expectations may be.

Patricia is eager to be the best mom she can be, but she finds parenting a hard task. Here's how she put it: "Just when I think I have it down, then something changes, and I have to make major adjustments. Parenting well feels like a moving target." Patricia is correct. In fact, much research has been done on the developmental stages of childhood. Babies learn to sit up, then crawl, and finally walk. Kids have a greater ability to reason as they get older, and logic makes sense as they move further into preadolescence. A logical implication of these developmental changes is that parents will need to make parenting shifts along the way. In other words, the one strategy to keep in mind as your children grow and change is that you must also change to meet their new developmental needs and abilities.

What we need in education is not measurement, accountability, or standards. While these can be useful tools for improvement, they should hardly occupy center stage. Our focus should instead be on making sure we are giving our youth an education that is going to arm them to save humanity. We are faced with unprecedented perils, and these perils are multiplying and pushing at our collective gates. We should be bolstering curriculum that helps young people mature into ethical adults who feel a responsibility to the global community. Without this sense of responsibility we have seen that many talented individuals give in to their greed and pride, and this destroys economies, ecosystems, and entire species. While we certainly should not abandon efforts to develop standards in different content areas, and also strengthen the STEM subjects, we need to take seriously our need for an education centered on global responsibility. If we don't, we risk extinction.

During the last two decades many developing countries have joined the global tourism market as part of globalization processes and the fall of the Iron Curtain. These countries had suffered from negative public and media image which made it challenging for them to compete over tourists with countries with strong and familiar brands. In this global era, a problematic image is a major obstacle in attracting tourists, high-quality residents and investors. However, in the case of destinations suffering from prolonged image crises, it seems almost unrealistic to expect any target audience to visit a destination and "put aside" these long-lasting negative images and stereotypes, just because of an advertising campaign or other promotional effort. Tackling prolonged negative place images is crucial for developing tourism in Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, Eastern Europe and Asia. Although these destinations differ greatly, in the eyes of many potential tourists they all suffer from weak place images, negative stereotypes and problematic perceptions.

Plant and animal species are so diverse that the old saying "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" could be the perfect slogan for nature's bounty. It's easy for most people to see the breathtaking beauty found in the brightly colored wings of butterflies, a field of blooming wildflowers, or a forest of hardwood trees in their autumn glory. But what about snails and their trails of slime, rats with yellow teeth, or spiders that look like fierce aliens? These species are beautiful in their own right—just not in a traditional sense. Recognition of their unique beauty may require setting aside any preconceptions—or misconceptions—people may have about fungi, insects, or reptiles. People seem to be hardwired to see warm and fuzzy mammals as cute, while often lacking this innate and immediate attraction to the cold-blooded, eight-legged, or egg-laying members of the animal kingdom. Yet beauty is in no short supply among these animals.

With the general accessibility of photocopiers in student libraries, students tend to copy the relevant material for later use. In such cases the students are not always selective about what they copy. Often useless material is gathered that may seem important at the time but does not seem so in their study room on the night before an exam or essay due date. In addition, when most people photocopy material from books, they feel as if they have actually accomplished something. After all, a few photocopied pages in their notebook now represent information that used to be in a big, thick book. The reality of the situation is that nothing significant has been accomplished yet. The student only has the information in a transportable form. He or she has not learned anything from the material. The information content of the photocopied sheets is just as foreign as if it had been left on the library shelf.

The original idea of a patent, remember, was not to reward inventors with monopoly profits, but to encourage them to share their inventions. A certain amount of intellectual property law is plainly necessary to achieve this. But it has gone too far. Most patents are now as much about defending monopoly and discouraging rivals as about sharing ideas. And that disrupts innovation. Many firms use patents as barriers to entry, suing upstart innovators who trespass on their intellectual property even on the way to some other goal. In the years before World War I, aircraft makers tied each other up in patent lawsuits and slowed down innovation until the US government stepped in. Much the same has happened with smartphones and biotechnology today. New entrants have to fight their way through "patent thickets" if they are to build on existing technologies to make new ones.

Our world today is comparatively harmless. We don't have to be careful every moment that a tiger is behind us. We do not have to worry about starving. Our dangers today are, for example, high blood pressure or diabetes. To be clear, we have a Stone Age brain that lives in a modern world. Because of this, many situations are considered a threat by our brains, although they are harmless to our survival. In the past, danger meant we either had to flee or fight. If we have an appointment but are stuck in a traffic jam, that does not really threaten our lives. However, our brain considers this a danger. That is the point. There is no danger, but our brain rates it as such. If we have an unpleasant conversation with our partner, it does not threaten our lives, and we do not have to flee or fight. The danger is an illusion. Our Stone Age brain sees a mortal danger that is not there.