Experts advise people to take the stairs instead of the elevator or walk or bike to work. These are good strategies: climbing stairs provides a good workout, and people who walk or ride a bicycle for transportation most often meet their needs for physical activity. Many people, however, face barriers in their environment that prevent such choices. Few people would choose to walk or bike on roadways that lack safe sidewalks or marked bicycle lanes, where vehicles speed by, or where the air is polluted. Few would choose to walk up stairs in inconvenient and unsafe stairwells in modern buildings. In contrast, people living in neighborhoods with safe biking and walking lanes, public parks, and freely available exercise facilities use them often - their surroundings encourage physical activity.

How can we teach our children to memorize a broad range of information? Let me prove to you that all people are potential geniuses, with brains designed to store, control, and remember large amounts of information through memorization by repetition. Imagine the grocery store where you shop the most. If I asked you to tell me where the eggs are, would you be able to do so? Of course you could. The average grocery store carries over 10,000 items, yet you can quickly tell me where to find most of them. Why? The store is organized by category, and you have shopped in the store repeatedly. In other words, you've seen those organized items over and over again, and the arrangement by category makes it easy for you to memorize the store's layout. You can categorize 10,000 items from just one store.

The first underwater photographs were taken by an Englishman named William Thompson. In 1856, he waterproofed a simple box camera, attached it to a pole, and lowered it beneath the waves off the coast of southern England. During the 10minute exposure, the camera slowly flooded with seawater, but the picture survived. Underwater photography was born. Near the surface, where the water is clear and there is enough light, it is quite possible for an amateur photographer to take great shots with an inexpensive underwater camera. At greater depths - it is dark and cold there - photography is the principal way of exploring a mysterious deep-sea world, 95 percent of which has never been seen before.

Honesty is a fundamental part of every strong relationship. Use it to your advantage by being open with what you feel and giving a truthful opinion when asked. This approach can help you escape uncomfortable social situations and make friends with honest people. Follow this simple policy in life - never lie. When you develop a reputation for always telling the truth, you will enjoy strong relationships based on trust. It will also be more difficult to manipulate you. People who lie get into trouble when someone threatens to uncover their lie. By living true to yourself, you'll avoid a lot of headaches. Your relationships will also be free from the poison of lies and secrets. Don't be afraid to be honest with your friends, no matter how painful the truth is. In the long term, lies with good intentions hurt people much more than telling the truth.

Since a great deal of day-to-day academic work is boring and repetitive, you need to be well motivated to keep doing it. A mathematician sharpens her pencils, works on a proof, tries a few approaches, gets nowhere, and finishes for the day. A writer sits down at his desk, produces a few hundred words, decides they are no good, throws them in the bin, and hopes for better inspiration tomorrow. To produce something worthwhile - if it ever happens - may require years of such fruitless labor. The Nobel Prizewinning biologist Peter Medawar said that about four-fifths of his time in science was wasted, adding sadly that nearly all scientific research leads nowhere. What kept all of these people going when things were going badly was their passion for their subject. Without such passion, they would have achieved nothing.

Within a store, the wall marks the back of the store, but not the end of the marketing. Merchandisers often use the back wall as a magnet, because it means that people have to walk through the whole store. This is a good thing because distance traveled relates more directly to sales per entering customer than any other measurable consumer variable. Sometimes, the wall's attraction is simply appealing to the senses, a wall decoration that catches the eye or a sound that catches the ear. Sometimes the attraction is specific goods. In supermarkets, the dairy is often at the back, because people frequently come just for milk. At video rental shops, it's the new releases.

The good news is, where you end up ten years from now is up to you. You are free to choose what you want to make of your life. It's called free will and it's your basic right. What's more, you can turn it on instantly! At any moment, you can choose to start showing more respect for yourself or stop hanging out with friends who bring you down. After all, you choose to be happy or miserable. The reality is that although you are free to choose, you can't choose the consequences of your choices. It's a package deal. As the old saying goes, If you pick up one end of the stick, you pick up the other. Choice and consequence go together like mashed potatoes and gravy.

Just think for a moment of all the people upon whom your participation in your class depends. Clearly, the class requires a teacher to teach it and students to take it. However, it also depends on many other people and organizations. Someone had to decide when the class would be held and in what room, communicate that information to you, and enroll you in that class. Someone also had to write a textbook, and with the assistance of many other people - printers, editors, salespeople, and bookstore employees - it has arrived in your hands. Thus, a class that seems to involve just you, your fellow students, and your teacher is in fact the product of the efforts of hundreds of people.