Anger itself is neither good nor bad. It's what we do when we're angry that matters. Anger is a tool that helps us to read and respond to the social situations that bother us. But how can we keep it under control?

    It's normal to think that getting angry is bad and many times we punish ourselves for doing so. But contrary to popular belief, research indicates that anger increases optimism, creativity and efficiency (效率). In addition, studies suggest that anger can lead to more successful negotiations at work, as well as in our personal lives.

    In fact, suppressing (抑制) anger can be very bad for your health. In this sense, Dr. Ernest Harburg performed a study by monitoring a group of adults and their capacity (最大容量) for anger. What he found is that the men and women who suppressed their anger as a response to an unfair attack had a higher risk of developing bronchitis (支气管炎) or suffering from heart attacks, and were more likely to die before their colleagues who let their anger surface (显现) when they felt bothered.

    When anger arises, we feel the need to either prevent or put an end to this powerful feeling for the benefit of our welfare or the welfare of those we care about. But this act of kindness, mercy, love or justice isn't beneficial in this way. However, it's certainly a good thing to be cautious when anger begins to surface. Expressing your anger can be appropriate with certain people at certain times. The question lies in how to do it without losing control. The key to expressing your anger is finding the appropriate tone for expressing what it is that upsets you. But to avoid unnecessary shouting, hitting, or other violent reactions, it's worth taking a moment to step back and think, even though we may be in the middle of an argument with someone.

    Cold weather during winter months may keep many people from leaving home and running in the open air.

    However, a new study shows that the drop in temperature is a good reason to run. In fact, researchers say, running in cold weather helps improve one's performance.

    Many people say running in the winter can be difficult. Two reasons are the low temperatures and bitter winds. Yet many runners might find it easier than running in hot weather.

    That could be because lower temperatures reduce stress on the body. When you run in cold weather, your heart rate and the body's dehydration (脱水) levels are lower than in warmer conditions. The body needs less water on a cold day than in warm weather.

    This information comes from sports scientists at St. Mary's University in London. John Brewer is a professor of applied sport science at St. Mary's.

    For this study, he and other researchers put a group of people into a room they called an “environmental chamber.” The researchers then recreated summer and winter weather conditions in the room. The test subjects were asked to run 10,000 meters under both conditions. Brewer says he and his team recorded biological measurements of the runners.

    “We've got a group of subjects into the environmental chamber, we've changed the conditions to replicate the summer or winter and we've got them to run a 10km under both of those conditions and taken various measurements on each runner while they've been completing their 10km.”

    Brewer says every movement runners make produces heat. He explains that one way in which we lose heat is by sweating. The body loses heat through droplets of sweat. He says the body also loses heat by transporting the blood to the surface of the skin.

    More students than ever before are taking a gap year（间隔年） before going to university. It used to be the "year off" between school and university. The gap﹣year phenomenon originated（起源） with the months left over to Oxbridge applicants between entrance exams in November and the start of the next academic year.

    This year, 25310 students who have accepted places in higher education institutions have put off their entry until next year, according to statistics on university entrance provided by the University and College Admissions Service （UCAS）.

    That is a record 14.7% increase in the number of students taking a gap year. Tony Higgins from UCAS said that the statistics are good news for everyone in higher education. "Students who take a well﹣planned year out are more likely to be satisfied with, and complete, their chosen course. Students who take a gap year are often more mature and responsible, "he said.

    But not everyone is happy. Owain James, the president of the National Union of Students （NUS）, argued that the increase is evidence of student hardship﹣young people are being forced into earning money before finishing their education. "New students are now aware that they are likely to leave university up to￡15, 000 in debt. It is not surprising that more and more students are taking a gap year to earn money to support their study for the degree. NUS statistics show that over 40% of students are forced to work during term time and the figure increases to 90% during vacation periods," he said.

    There's a word of wellness I've loved for years. It's HALT: the idea that if you want to be calm and content, never let yourself get too hungry, angry, lonely or tired. Researchers are increasingly looking more closely at the "L" in "HALT", with one report presented to the American Psychological Association finding that long-term loneliness might be a greater public health risk than obesity.

    Loneliness is a problem with many faces. Some people are alone most of the time—data collected by the United Kingdom found that 200, 000 people over the age of 75 had not had a conversation with a friend or a relative in more than a month. But some people feel lonely even in a crowded room, disconnected from meaningful relationships even though their days are filled with people.

    To me, walking a positive path means walking alongside others—people who lift our spirits, share our values, challenge us to grow and learn and bring us joy. But social satisfaction doesn't come automatically or even easily to too many people. And in our age of individualized electronic devices, social media and text-based communication, it can be harder than ever to feel truly connected to others.

    I was so heartened to read that recently the British Parliament (议会) has created a "Minister for Loneliness" position to promote research, education and principles so as to cure what some researchers call "the loneliness disease". More and more doctors in America are also screening adult patients for loneliness at annual physical examinations, which is another promising sign.

    With proper social support and community participation, loneliness can be prevented from happening. If you are feeling lonely, make a list of your daily routines and ask yourself how you could add more social interactions to each day. Try reaching out for volunteer opportunities, clubs and organizations to join and old friendships to renew. If you are struggling, ask a consultant to help you identify your social obstacles and overcome them.

When I teach research methods, a major focus is peer review. As a process, peer review evaluates academic papers for their quality, integrity and impact on a field, largely shaping what scientists accept as "knowledge"- By instinct, any academic follows up a new idea with the question, "Was that peer reviewed?"

Although I believe in the importance of peer review and I help do peer reviews for several academic journals-I know how vulnerable the process can be. 

I had my first encounter with peer review during my first year as a Ph. D student. One day, my adviser handed me an essay and told me to have my -written review back to him in a week. But at the time, I certainly was not a "peer"--I was too new in my field. Manipulated data （不实的数据） or substandard methods could easily have gone undetected. Knowledge is not self-evident. Only experts would be able to notice them, and even then, experts do not always agree on what they notice. 

Let's say in my life I only see white swans. Maybe I write an essay, concluding that all swans are white. And a "peer" says, "Wait a minute, I've seen black swans. "I would have to refine my knowledge. 

The peer plays a key role evaluating observations with the overall goal of advancing knowledge. For example, if the above story were reversed, and peer reviewers who all believed that all swans were white came across the first study observing a black swan, the study would receive a lot of attention. 

So why was a first-year graduate student getting to stand in for an expert? Why would my review count the same as an expert's review? One answer: The process relies almost entirely on unpaid labor. 

Despite the fact that peers are professionals, peer review is not a profession. As a result, the same over-worked scholars often receive masses of the peer review requests. Besides the labor inequity, a small pool of experts can lead to a narrowed process of what is publishable or what counts as knowledge, directly threatening diversity of perspectives and scholars. Without a large enough reviewer pool, the process can easily fall victim to biases, arising from a small community recognizing each other's work and compromising conflicts of interest. 

Despite these challenges. I still tell my students that peer review offers the best method for evaluating studies aird advancing knowledge. As a process, peer review theoretically works. The question is whether the issues with peer review can be addressed by professionalizing the field. 

A new study examined scientists' peer reviews, or researchers' official statements on others' work, across multiple AI-related conferences. At one such conference, those peer reviews used the word "meticulous" — a buzzword often associated with generative A.I., like ChatGPT — almost 3,400 percent more than the previous year. Other major conferences showed similar patterns. In other words, many researchers were handing, at least, parts of their peer review over to A.I.

What's going on in science is a slice of a much bigger problem. Any viral post on social media now almost certainly includes A.I.-generated elements. There are synthetic videos for children on YouTube, like music videos about parrots where the birds have eyes within eyes, singing in an unnatural voice. The narratives make no sense, and characters appear and disappear randomly.

As a neuroscientist, this worries me. Isn't it possible that human culture contains within it cognitive micronutrients — things like reasonable sentences, narrations and character continuity — that developing brains need? Einstein supposedly said: "If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be very intelligent, read them more fairy tales." But what happens when a child is consuming mostly A.I.-generated waste? We find ourselves in the middle of a vast developmental experiment.

A.I.'s cultural pollution is driven by a desire to fill the Internet's appetite for content as cheaply as possible, which in turn pollutes our culture. And despite public appeals to act against it, A.I. companies are dragging their feet because it goes against the industry's bottom line to have detectable products, which they fear might weaken the model's performance, although there is no current evidence.

To deal with this general refusal to act, we need a Clean Internet Act. Perhaps the simplest solution would be to force built-in watermarking to A.I. generated outputs, like patterns not easily removable. Just as the 20th century required action to protect the shared environment, the 21st century is going to require actions to protect a different but equally critical resource: our shared human culture.