How long has 3-D technology been around? Most of us might think of crowds of teenagers in a 1950's movie house watching Bwana Devil in 3-D. But 3-D technology made its first appearance on the scene in 1838 with the first stereoscope(体视镜). And the first actual 3-D movie was a 1903 film called Le Ariveed'un Train.

    Although it has such a long history, the technology has still remained based on one simple principle—to make 3-D effects you must find a way to project two slightly different pictures to each eye. Modern 3-D technology works by rapidly flickering(闪动)two versions of the movie and projecting them onto each eye. The brain does the rest of the work, combining the two pictures together into one and giving the show the appearance of depth, the third dimension.

    But does this exposure, especially long exposures, cause harm to the child's developing brain and visual system? Unfortunately, long-term studies on new flicker digital 3-D technology and children aren't yet available. We do not know if regular or daily 3-D viewing over years affects the developing visual system, although older 3-D methods basically do the same thing and are not considered harmful.

    The question of possible harm in modern 3-D use in TV is really based on two facts: the amount of time children will now be watching 3-D TV each day and the sensitivity some children show in reaction to 3-D viewing. It is difficult to make actual lab studies of longer term 3-D viewing in children because of the possible harm of the experiment. Researchers will have to wait until 3-D TV technology is already in the marketplace for a number of years, then check heavy 3-D TV watchers and compare them with non-watchers.

    With a 3-D television technology in the home, we will soon be able to answer the question of whether or not longer and more frequent periods of 3-D exposure cause more changes in the visual system. We may find that the bigger problem is the introduction of a new technology that leads to even more time spent on TV rather than playing outdoors.

Decision-making under Stress

    A new review based on a research shows that acute stress affects the way the brain considers the advantages and disadvantages, causing it to focus on pleasure and ignore the possible negative (负面的) consequences of a decision.

     The research suggests that stress may change the way people make choices in predictable ways.

    “Stress affects how people learn,” says Professor Mara Mather. “People learn better about positive than negative outcomes under stress.”

    For example, two recent studies looked at how people learned to connect images(影像) with either rewards or punishments. In one experiment, some of the participants were first stressed by having to give a speech and do difficult math problems in front of an audience; in the other, some were stressed by having to keep their hands in ice water. In both cases, the stressed participants remembered the rewarded material more accurately and the punished material less accurately than those who hadn't gone through the stress.

    This phenomenon is likely not surprising to anyone who has tried to resist eating cookies or smoking a cigarette while under stress –at those moments, only the pleasure associated with such activities comes to mind. But the findings further suggest that stress may bring about a double effect. Not only are rewarding experiences remembered better, but negative consequences are also easily recalled.

    The research also found that stress appears to affect decision-making differently in men and women. While both men and women tend to focus on rewards and less on consequences under stress, their responses to risk turn out to be different.

    Men who had been stressed by the cold-water task tended to take more risks in the experiment while women responded in the opposite way. In stressful situations in which risk-taking can pay off big, men may tend to do better, when caution weighs more, however, women will win.

    This tendency to slow down and become more cautious when decisions are risky might also help explain why women are less likely to become addicted than men: they may more often avoid making the risky choices that eventually harden into addiction.

    Many of the world's most well-known people were once successful failures. Here are the stories of a few of them.

    Abraham Lincoln(1809-1865)

    Abraham Lincoln was one of America's greatest leaders, taking the country through the Civil War(from 1860 to 1865). However, his life was never easy. He started numerous businesses that failed. He went bankrupt twice, and was defeated in 26 campaigns for public office. He later said, “My great concern is not whether you have failed, but whether you are content with your failure. ”

    Vincent Van Gogh(1853-1890)

    Van Gogh is one of the most famous and influential painters in the history of Western Art. He's renowned for paintings such as TheStarryNight, ThePotatoEaters and Sunflowers. However, during his lifetime, Van Gogh sold only one painting for a very small amount of money. Despite this, he carried on painting, sometimes even going without food so he could complete his collection of over 800 known works.

    Albert Einstein(1879-1955)

    Albert Einstein won the Noble Prize in Physics in 1921. However, he wasn't always considered as a “genius”. He didn't speak until he was four, and couldn't read until he was seven. His teachers and parents thought he was slow, so he was expelled from school and couldn't get into the Zurich Polytechnic School. He later famously said, “Success is failure in progress. ”

    Stephen King(born 1947)

    Stephen King is one of the best-selling authors of all time, but his first book,  Carrie, was rejected by about 30 publishers. Eventually, Stephen threw it in the bin,  but his wife fished it out and encouraged him to resubmit it, which he did successfully this time!

    In recent years, China has witnessed the growth of luxury (奢侈品) brands. In this market, Chinese consumers are now the largest spenders. It's clear that a new generation of young, materialistic people is increasingly relying on luxury brands to improve its self-image.

I am a fashionist too, at least in spirit—I love to look at clothes and shoes. But I don't understand why people spend lots of money on designer labels.

    When a young woman buys a handbag that costs two months of her salary, that's a scary thing.

    What's interesting is that scientists have found that having luxury things doesn't lead to happiness.

    Study after study has shown that although we want material things, when we get them we don't suddenly become "happy" people. In fact, a series of studies by Leaf Van Boven at the University of Colorado, US, has shown that individuals who spend money on travel and similar experiences get more pleasure than those who invest it in material things. That's because experiences are more easily combined with a person's identity. If I travel to Yunnan, that adventure affects how I think in the future. My memories become a part of me.

    Moreover, as Van Boven has observed, young people who pursue happiness through "things" are liked less by their peers. People prefer those who pursue happiness through experiences.

    It's natural to want to express yourself through your appearance. So my advice is: create a look that isn't tied to a designer label. Convey your own message. Take some lessons from the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. He was always in Levis jeans and a black turtleneck. Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, routinely appears in hoodies and sneakers. These people, successful people, have style. You don't have to break the bank to send a message about who you are.

    Take a trip. Go out into the world. Then come back and confidently create your own signature look.

    Science is finaly beginning to embrace animals who were, for a long time, considered second-class citizens.

    As Annie Potts of Canterbury University has noted, chickens distinguish among one hundred chicken faces and recognize familiar individuals even after months of separation. When given problems to solve, they reason: hens trained to pick colored buttons sometimes choose to give up an immediate food reward for a slightly later (and better) one. Healthy hens may aid friends, and mourn when those friend die.

    Pigs respond meaningful to human symbols. When a research team led by Candace Croney at Penn State University carried wooden blocks marked with X and O symbols around pigs, only the O carriers offered food to the animals. The pigs soon ignored the X carriers in favor of the O's. Then the team switched from real-life objects to T-shirts printed with X or O symbols. Still, the pigs walked only toward the O-shirted people: they had transferred their knowledge to a two-dimensional format, a not inconsiderable feat of reasoning.

    I've been guilty of prejudiced expectations, myself. At the start of my career almost four decades ago, I was firmly convinced that monkeys and apes out-think and out-feel other animals. They're other primates(灵长目动物), after all, animals from our own mammalian(哺乳动物的) class. Fairly soon, I came to see that along with our closest living relatives, whales too are masters of cultural learning, and elephants express profound joy and mourning with their social companions. Long-term studies in the wild on these mammals helped to fuel a viewpoint shift in our society: the public no longer so easily accepts monkeys made to undergo painful procedure kin laboratories, elephants forced to perform in circuses, and dolphins kept in small tanks at theme parks.

    Over time, though, as I began to broaden out even further and explore the inner lives of fish, chickens, pigs, goats, and cows, I started to wonder: Will the new science of "food animals" bring an ethical (伦理的) revolution in terms of who we eat? In other words, will our ethics start to catch up with the development of our science?

    Animal activists are already there, of course, committed to not eating these animals. But what about the rest of us? Can paying attention to the thinking and feeling of these animals lead us to make changes in who we eat?