By 2050, a completely new type of human evolve as a result of extremely new technology, behavior, and natural selection. This is according to Cadell Last, a researcher at the Global Brain Institute, who claims mankind is undergoing a major “evolutionary transition”.

    In less than four decades, Mr. Last claims we will live longer, have children in old age and rely on artificial intelligence to do ordinary and boring tasks. This shift is so significant, he claims, it is comparable to the change from monkeys to apes, and apes to humans. “Your 80 or 100 is going to be so radically different than your grandparents,” Mr. Last says, who believes we will spend much of our time living in virtual reality. Some evolutionary scientists believe this age could be as high as 120 by 2050.

    Mr. Last claims humans will also demonstrate delayed sexual maturation, according to a report by Christina Sterbenz in Business Insider. This refers to something known as life history theory which attempts to explain how natural selection shapes key events in a creature's life, such as reproduction. It suggests that as brain sizes increase, organisms need more energy and time to reach their full potential, and so reproduce less.

    Instead of living fast and dying younger, Mr. Last believes humans will live slow and die old. “Global society at the moment is a complete mess,” he told MailOnline. “But in crisis there is opportunity, and in apocalypse (启示) there can be transformation. So I think the next system humanity creates will be far more sophisticated, fair, and abundant than our current civilization.”

    “I think our next system will be as different from the modern world, as our contemporary world is from the medieval (中世纪的) world. The biological clock isn't going to be around forever,” he added, and said that people could pause it for some time using future technology.

    The change is already happening. Today, the average age at which a woman in Britain has her first baby has been rising steadily stands at 29. 8. In the US, just one percent of first children were born to women over the age of 35 in 1970. By 2012, that figure rose to 15 percent.

    “As countries become socio-economically advanced, more and more people, especially women have the option to engage in cultural reproduction,” Mr. Last added. And as well as having more child-free years to enjoy leisure time, he believes artificial intelligence will make up the need for low-skill jobs. We may also spend a large amount of time living in virtual reality. “I'm not quite sure most people have really absorbed the implications of this possibility,” Mr. Last said.

    His views are detailed in a paper, titled “Human Evolution, Life History Theory, and the End of Biological Reproduction" published Current Aging Science.

    Your school asked parents about the social development in children in the last Parents' Meeting. Here are some opinions. Read the following information and answer the questions.

    Reducing plastic waste isn't easy because the cheap material is found in almost every household item. Now, a delicious and nutritious solution has come up to help reduce our dependence on this environmental hazard.

    David Christian, the co-founder of Evoware, says the idea of creating the biodegradable (生物降解的) products came from concern at the country's high pollution rate. Indonesia is home to four of the world's worst polluted rivers. Since single-use packaging is a large contributor to the problem, Evoware decided to deal with that first.

    After investigating various materials, the company settled on seaweed. Unlike com, commonly used for biodegradable containers, seaweed does not require resources like water or large amounts of space. Since Indonesian farmers already harvest more seaweed than they can sell, it's easy for the company to find the material.

    Though they will not reveal their production process, Evoware says the seaweed packaging contains no chemicals and is safe to consume. The company has also invented single-use cups, which can break down 30 days after they're thrown away.

    While replacing plastic with the seaweed products may seem appealing to most of us, it is a hard-sell in Indonesia. According to Christian, “The awareness to reduce single-use plastic is still very low. This makes our bioplastic unnecessary.” Also a factor is the cost, which is higher than using plastic. Hopefully, Evoware will succeed in convincing Indonesians and people worldwide that switching to their products will be helpful to protecting our beautiful planet.

    Do you have trouble trying to create the next big idea? Sometimes the answer isn't to just force an idea out of your mind. Instead, you might want to try sitting back, relaxing and letting your mind wander. Yes, you heard that correctly. If you are in need of a new idea, try daydreaming.

    Researchers from the university of California, Santa Barbara, found an association between daydreaming and creative problem-solving. Their study includes having participants first do an "unusual-use task". They had to try to come up with as many different ways to use an object as they could.

    Then, the participants chose to do one of the following four things before doing the "unusual-use task" again: complete a difficult task; complete an easy task; take a 12-minute break; or skip the 12-minute break and move right on to the task exercise again.

    Surprisingly, the group that performed best was the one that completed the easy task. Many participants reported that they were daydreaming while performing the easy task. So the researchers believed that this daydreaming might have helped unlock their creativity.

    But how could daydreaming help the brain come up with creative ways? The answer is something known as "unconscious thought". Even when you are not actively working to solve a problem, it is still in the back of your mind. Your brain is still thinking about the problem, but in a much more subtle (不易察觉的) way.

    When you daydream, your mind is allowed to think in ways it normally would not. Because it is free of control, it can create completely new and out-of-the-box ideas.

    Great ideas never come easily, but that does not mean you always have to work hard to get them. Feel free to do what you want and let your mind wander.

    When we see cute babies, or adorable baby animals, many of us feel a strong urge to squeeze or pinch them or even bite them. Scientists call this strange response "cute aggression".

    Stavropoulos's team gathered 54 people to look at 32 pictures of four sets. One set contained photos of cute baby animals. Another set contained pictures of less-cute, fully grown animals. The other two sets were photos of human babies which were digitally edited. One set was changed to emphasize features we find cute, such as big eyes and full cheeks. The other was edited to reduce those features.

    The scientists found that the participants had much more feelings of cute aggression towards images of baby animals than those of adult animals. Surprisingly, this difference was not seen from the two sets of human baby pictures in comparison.

    To assess cute aggression, the participants were asked questions about the degree of wanting to aggress the subjects of the photos, and of wanting to care for them. Scientists suspect these responses are associated with not only the brain's emotional systems, but also its reward systems, which adjust motivation, pleasure and feelings of "wanting".

    Cute aggression may give humans the highly adaptive ability to control emotional response. To limit the motivation of positive feelings, the brain gives commands of the aggression. In other words, the brain throws in a bit of aggression to keep the good feelings from becoming uncontrolled. "If you find yourself fascinated by how cute a baby is, —so much so that you simply can't control it—that baby is going to starve." It stops us from investing too much energy into cute things. So, there is no need to feel bad for the desire to pinch them at the sight of cute babies. It's not because we're mean people. The "unfriendly" movement of our fingers is just our brain's way of making sure nothing gets too cute to handle.

    One of my favorite hobbies is exchanging old-fashioned, paper-with-a-stamp-on-it postcards with random strangers around the world.

    The Postcrossing Project was created by Paulo Magalhaes in 2005. He liked getting mails—especially postcards. He thought others did, too—but how could he connect with them? That's when he came up with the idea of an online platform (postcrossing.com): There, postcard lovers like me can sign up to send a postcard to someone who has registered online, and receive a postcard in return.

    Along with a randomly selected address, participants get a unique code to put on the postcard. When the postcard arrives, the recipient registers that code with the site, which then causes the sender's address to be given to another postcrosser in turn. In practice, this means that for nearly every postcard I send (a few get lost in the mail) I get one back. And since I never know who will send me a card or where in the world they live, every trip to the mailbox holds the potential for a wonderful surprise.

    Privacy-conscious Americans might worry about sharing their address with strangers overseas. But postcrossers are friendly, polite, respectful folks—in more than 450 cards exchanged, I've yet to have a bad experience.

    On days when the international news is depressing, postcrossing is my comfort. There's nothing like getting a card from a child in China just learning to write in English, or a grandmother in Belarus describing her most recent gardening success to remind me that we truly are members of one global family, far more similar than we are different.

    It seems like such a small thing to send out a postcard. But as travel and communication technology continue to shrink the world, it's important to remember that it isn't just for diplomats and politicians to represent our country anymore. All of us have the power—and perhaps the responsibility—to be ambassadors, to show the best of your country to the world.

    And it's good to know that what you need to accomplish this is not necessarily complicated or expensive. It can be as simple as a postcard.