A psychology professor raised a glass of water while teaching stress management principles to her students, and asked them, How heavy is this glass of water I'm holding?↵
Students shouted out various answers.↵
The professor replied, The absolute weight of this glass doesn't matter.↵
It depends on how long I hold it.↵
If I hold it for a minute, it's quite light.↵
But, if I hold it for a day straight, it will cause severe pain in my arm, forcing me to drop the glass to the floor.↵
In each case, the weight of the glass is the same, but the longer I hold it, the heavier it feels to me.↵
As the class nodded their heads in agreement, she continued, Your stresses in life are like this glass of water.↵
If you still feel the weight of yesterday's stress, it's a strong sign that it's time to put the glass down.

Only a generation or two ago, mentioning the word algorithms would have drawn a blank from most people.↵
Today, algorithms appear in every part of civilization.↵
They are connected to everyday life.↵
They're not just in your cell phone or your laptop but in your car, your house, your appliances, and your toys.↵
Your bank is a huge web of algorithms, with humans turning the switches here and there.↵
Algorithms schedule flights and then fly the airplanes.↵
Algorithms run factories, trade goods, and keep records.↵
If every algorithm suddenly stopped working, it would be the end of the world as we know it.

One of the big questions faced this past year was how to keep innovation rolling when people were working entirely virtually.↵
But experts say that digital work didn't have a negative effect on innovation and creativity.↵
Working within limits pushes us to solve problems.↵
Overall, virtual meeting platforms put more constraints on communication and collaboration than face-to-face settings.↵
For instance, with the press of a button, virtual meeting hosts can control the size of breakout groups and enforce time constraints; only one person can speak at a time; nonverbal signals, particularly those below the shoulders, are diminished; seating arrangements are assigned by the platform, not by individuals; and visual access to others may be limited by the size of each participant's screen.↵
Such restrictions are likely to stretch participants beyond their usual ways of thinking, boosting creativity.

The law of demand is that the demand for goods and services increases as prices fall, and the demand falls as prices increase.↵
Giffen goods are special types of products for which the traditional law of demand does not apply.↵
Instead of switching to cheaper replacements, consumers demand more of giffen goods when the price increases and less of them when the price decreases.↵
Taking an example, rice in China is a giffen good because people tend to purchase less of it when the price falls.↵
The reason for this is, when the price of rice falls, people have more money to spend on other types of products such as meat and dairy and, therefore, change their spending pattern.↵
On the other hand, as rice prices increase, people consume more rice.

In a study at Princeton University in 1992, research scientists looked at two different groups of mice.↵
One group was made intellectually superior by modifying the gene for the glutamate receptor.↵
Glutamate is a brain chemical that is necessary in learning.↵
The other group was genetically manipulated to be intellectually inferior, also done by modifying the gene for the glutamate receptor.↵
The smart mice were then raised in standard cages, while the inferior mice were raised in large cages with toys and exercise wheels and with lots of social interaction.↵
At the end of the study, although the intellectually inferior mice were genetically handicapped, they were able to perform just as well as their genetic superiors.↵
This was a real triumph for nurture over nature.↵
Genes are turned on or off based on what is around you.

Researchers are working on a project that asks coastal towns how they are preparing for rising sea levels.↵
Some towns have risk assessments; some towns even have a plan.↵
But it's a rare town that is actually carrying out a plan.↵
One reason we've failed to act on climate change is the common belief that it is far away in time and space.↵
For decades, climate change was a prediction about the future, so scientists talked about it in the future tense.↵
This became a habit ― so that even today many scientists still use the future tense, even though we know that a climate crisis is ongoing.↵
Scientists also often focus on regions most affected by the crisis, such as Bangladesh or the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which for most Americans are physically remote.

According to legend, once a vampire bites a person, that person turns into a vampire who seeks the blood of others.↵
A researcher came up with some simple math, which proves that these highly popular creatures can't exist.↵
University of Central Florida physics professor Costas Efthimiou's work breaks down the myth.↵
Suppose that on January 1st, 1600, the human population was just over five hundred million.↵
If the first vampire came into existence that day and bit one person a month, there would have been two vampires by February 1st, 1600.↵
A month later there would have been four, the next month eight, then sixteen, and so on.↵
In just two-and-a-half years, the original human population would all have become vampires with no humans left.↵
But look around you.↵
Have vampires taken over the world?↵
No, because there's no such thing.

Friction is a force between two surfaces that are sliding, or trying to slide, across each other.↵
For example, when you try to push a book along the floor, friction makes this difficult.↵
Friction always works in the direction opposite to the direction in which the object is moving, or trying to move.↵
So, friction always slows a moving object down.↵
The amount of friction depends on the surface materials.↵
The rougher the surface is, the more friction is produced.↵
Friction also produces heat.↵
For example, if you rub your hands together quickly, they will get warmer.↵
Friction can be a useful force because it prevents our shoes slipping on the floor when we walk and stops car tires skidding on the road.↵
When you walk, friction is caused between the tread on your shoes and the ground, acting to grip the ground and prevent sliding.

Humans born without sight are not able to collect visual experiences, so they understand the world entirely through their other senses.↵
As a result, people with blindness at birth develop an amazing ability to understand the world through the collection of experiences and memories that come from these nonvisual senses.↵
The dreams of a person who has been without sight since birth can be just as vivid and imaginative as those of someone with normal vision.↵
They are unique, however, because their dreams are constructed from the nonvisual experiences and memories they have collected.↵
A person with normal vision will dream about a familiar friend using visual memories of shape, lighting, and colour.↵
But, a blind person will associate the same friend with a unique combination of experiences from their nonvisual senses that act to represent that friend.↵
In other words, people blind at birth have similar overall dreaming experiences even though they do not dream in pictures.

According to a study of Swedish adolescents, an important factor of adolescents' academic success is how they respond to challenges.↵
The study reports that when facing difficulties, adolescents exposed to an authoritative parenting style are less likely to be passive, helpless, and afraid to fail.↵
Another study of nine high schools in Wisconsin and northern California indicates that children of authoritative parents do well in school, because these parents put a lot of effort into getting involved in their children's school activities.↵
That is, authoritative parents are significantly more likely to help their children with homework, to attend school programs, to watch their children in sports, and to help students select courses.↵
Moreover, these parents are more aware of what their children do and how they perform in school.↵
Finally, authoritative parents praise academic excellence and the importance of working hard more than other parents do.