English is full of colorful phrases to describe shyness. Someone shy might be called shrinking violet or a wallflower, while for especially nervous types we have the curious expression: they wouldn't say boo to a goose.

    None of these are traditionally seen as positive descriptions, even if you like geese. In a culture of go-getting, high achievers, shy people don't come first. Or that's what the self-help industry would have you believe. Bookshops are filled with vital tomes(巨著) that promise to help beat social fears and find success in life, love and business. That is why one book, Shrinking Violets: A Field Guide to Shyness, bucks the trend. It became a sudden success across English-language media recently for its new take-on shyness.

    Author Joe Moran says that despite struggling with shyness and longing for loneliness all his life, being shy can also be "a gift". Freed from the constant urge to participate and compete in social situations, people are liberated to look at the world in new ways, and gain fresh insights.

    Indeed, many of the world's great thinkers and artists are introverts(内向的人). Scientists Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein preferred their own company; actress Keira Knightley often finds herself tongue-tied at parties; and Harry Potter author JK Rowling claims she used to be too nervous to even borrow a pen.

    Moran told BBC Future: "I think shyness probably does turn you into an amateur anthropologist(人类学家), really-you are more likely to be an observer."

    So, while extroverts make all the noise, they don't necessarily have the best ideas.

    If you're shy, you've probably known this for a long time. You just don't shout about it.

    Almost all researches in sleep explain that nightmares are a reaction to negative experiences that happen during waking hours. However, some of them believe that nightmares do have some real benefits. One 2017 study, for example, found that frequent nightmare sufferers rated themselves as more empathetic (共鸣的). They also displayed more of a tendency to unconsciously mirror other people through things like yawning. People who have constant nightmares also tend to think further outside the box on psychoanalysis tasks. Some other researches have found support for the idea that nightmares might be linked to creativity.

    People seeking cure for nightmares were not necessarily more fearful or anxious, but rather had a general sensitivity to all emotional experience. Sensitivity is the driving force behind intense dreams. Heightened sensitivity to threats or fear during the day results in had dreams and nightmares, whereas heightened passion or excitement may result in more intense positive dream. And both these forms of dreams may feed back into waking life, perhaps increasing suffering after nightmares, or promoting social bonds and empathy after positive dreams.

    The effects go further still. This sensitivity overflows over into perceptions and thoughts: people who have a lot of nightmares experience a dreamlike quality to their waking thoughts. And this kind of thinking seems to give them a creative edge. For instance, studies show that such people tend to have greater creative talent and artistic express. And people who often have nightmares also tend to have more positive dreams than the average person.

    The evidence points towards the idea that, rather than disturbing normal activity, people who are unfortunate in having a lot of nightmares also have a dreaming life that is at least as creative, positive and vivid as it can be distressing and terrifying. What's more, this imaginative richness is unlikely to be limited to sleep, but also is filled with waking thought and daydreams. Even after people wake up and shake off the nightmare, in other words, a mark of it stays behind, possessing them throughout the day.

    As we age, our ability to think and remember starts to deteriorate. But not everyone. Some of us have brains that age more slowly. Enter the super-ager!

    Super-agers are people over the age of 80 who have the brain structures and abilities of much younger people. Eighty-seven-year-old Bill Gurolnick is a super-ager. “What do I feel like? If I was to give a number, I probably feel like I'm about my early 70s…”

    Scientists know that parts of the brain decrease in size with age. But in super-agers that process is much slower. Emily Rogalski is a neuroscientist at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, in Chicago, Illinois. In a recent study, she showed that super-agers have young brains. The area of the brain responsible for attention and memory—the cortex—was shown to be thicker in super-agers. “When we look at the cortex of their brain, we see that, on average, that it looks more like a 50-year-old brain that it looks like an average 80-year-old bran…”

    Not only do super-ages have thicker cortexes, they have more spindle neurons. These large brain cells appear to be involved with social-emotional communication. But their exact purpose is still a mystery. Scientists writing for Smithsonian magazine say they are “brain cells for socializing.”

    Several factors affect how our brains age. Scientists say super-agers have several things in common, including an active lifestyle. Many travel and play sports. They are often big readers. And they usually have healthy relationships and spend time with friends. Super-agers also seem to have certain common personality traits. Rogalski says they are, for the most part, known for their optimism, resilience and perseverance. Growing old, she adds, does not have to be depressing and sad. “Perhaps, if we expected a bit better from ourselves, then we would understand that not all aging is stressful!”

    Can we all be super-agers? The science behind super-aging is a relatively new, but growing field. Scientists involved in the research offer this advice as we age: Stay active. Learn new things. Challenge yourself. Surround yourself with healthy relationships.

    Obama, Lady Gaga and Steve Jobs—what do they have in common? They are, of course, all Americans. And according to a survey by social networking site baidu.com, they all best illustrate the word “cool”.

    But just what does it mean to say someone is “cool”? Most would answer that it is something to do with being independent-minded and not following the crowd.

    Yale University art professor Robert Farris Thompson says that the term “cool” goes back to 15th century West African philosophy. “Cool” relates to ideas of grace under pressure.

    “In Africa,” he writes, “coolness is a positive quality which combines calmness, silence, and life.”

    The modern idea of “cool” developed largely in the US in the period after World War II. “Post-war 'cool' was in part an expression of war-weariness… it went against the strict social rules of the time,” write sociologists Dick Pountain and David Robins in Cool Rules: Anatomy of an Attitude.

    But it was the American actor James Dean who became the symbol for “cool” in the hugely successful 1955 movie Rebel without a Cause. Dean plays a tough guy who disobeys his parents and the authorities. He always gets the girl, smokes cigarettes, wears a leather jacket and beats up bullies. In the movie, Dean showed what “cool” would mean to American young people for the next 60 years.

    Today the focus of “cool” has changed to athletics stars. Often in movies about schools, students gain popularity on the athletics field more than in the classroom. This can be seen quite clearly in movies like Varsity Blues and John Tucker Must Die.

But many teenagers also think being smart is cool. Chess and other thinking games have been becoming more popular in schools.

    “Call it the Harry Potterization of America—a time when being smart is the new cool,” writes journalist Joe Sunnen.

    The yearly Academy Awards ceremony was once a private affair. Now, because of television, it is very much a public affair. Hundreds of people gather in Hoolywood to see the Oscars presented to outstanding actors, and others involved（参与） in the motion picture industry. Millions more watch on the television.

    It all began on May 16, 1929, when 270 men and women sat down to dinner at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. There was no secret about the winners. The names of the winners had been known for months. Janet Gaynor, for example had won as Best Actress. Douglas Fairbanks presented her with the famous gold statue（塑像）. The little statue was not then called Oscar. Like a new actor, Oscar was unknown. About six years later, it somehow got that renowned name. A number of explanations have been offered for its origin(由来), but nobody knows the true story for certain.

    Nowadays the result of the Oscar voting are kept secret. Only two people know the winners before the names are announced at the ceremony. The counting of votes is not done by one group of people but by different groups. Nobody except two members of an accounting company sees the final results.

    The information is not kept in open files. Winners' names are placed in closed envelopes. The accountants each carry a complete set of envelopes to the ceremony. One set is simply a spare to be used in case something happens to the other one.

    We hope you've finally made your peace with Pluto being downgraded from a planet to an ice dwarf (冰矮星)，because we have some more jarring news for you : It seems your teachers may have been wrong about the number of continents on the earth, too.

    Earlier this year, scientists published a report in the journal of the Geological Society of America detailing an eighth continent called Zealandia, roughly the size of India and almost completely hid itself under the Pacific Ocean east of Australia. Covering all of New Zealand as well as several nearby islands, Zealandia likely spent the best of its above-water days as part of the supercontinent Gondwana before fragmenting off Australia and Antarctica some 80 million years ago. This lost, underwater continent is just beginning to reveal its secrets, making for one of the most promising scientific discoveries this year.

    While researchers have been aware of the 1. 9 million-square-mile mass for two decades, Zealandia has only recently become the object of serious study since the Geological Society paper argued that it fits all the criteria for a proper continent, including a continental crust (地壳)that's distinctly separate from the seabed in terms of elevation, thickness, and geology. A team of 32 scientists from 12 countries just completed their first visit to six dig sites around Zealandia, where they drilled up more than 8,000 feet of sediment cores (沉积物岩心)that will help explain the lost continent's 80-million-year history.

    Because there is no official body that formally recognizes continents, whether or not Zealandia ends up in future geography textbooks will come down to its acceptance by the scientific community at large, possibly with a little help from travelers like you.