Make Up Your Mind to Succeed

    Kind-hearted parents have unknowingly left their children defenseless against failure. The generation born between 1980 and 2001 grew up playing sports where scores and performance were played down because “everyone's a winner.” And their report cards sounded more positive  than ever before. As a result, Stanford University professor Carol Dweck, PhD, calls them “the overpraised generation.”

    Dweck has been studying how people deal with failure for 40 years. Her research has led her to find out two clearly different mind-sets that have a great effect on how we react to it. Here's how they work:

    A fixed mind-set is grounded in the belief that talent is genetic – you're a born artist, point guard, or numbers person. The fixed mind-set believes it's sure to succeed without much effort and regards failure as personal shame. When things get difficult, it's quick to blame, lie, and even stay away from future difficulties.

    On the other hand, a growth mind-set believes that no talent is entirely heaven-sent and that effort and learning make everything possible. Because the ego (自尊) isn't on the line as much, the growth mind-set sees failure as a chance rather than shame. When faced with a difficulty, it's quick to rethink, change and try again. In fact, it enjoys this experience.

    We are all born with growth mind-sets. (Otherwise, we wouldn't be able to live in the world.) But parents, teachers, and instructors often push us into fixed mind-sets by encouraging certain actions and misdirecting praise. Dweck's book, Mind-set: The New Psychology of Success, and online instructional program explain this in depth. But she says there are many little things you can start doing today to make sure that your children, grandchildren and even you are never defeated by failure.

Choosing the Right Resolution (决定)

     Millions of Americans began 2014 with the same resolution they started 2013 with, a goal of losing weight. However, setting weight loss as a goal is a mistake.

To reach our goal of losing weight — the output, we need to control what we eat — the input ( 输入). That is, we tend to care about the output but not to control the input. This is a bad way to construce goals. The alternative is to focus your resolution on the input. Instead of resolving to lose weight, try an actionable resolution: “I'll stop having desert for lunch,” or “I'll walk every day for 20 minutes.” Creating a goal that focuses on a well-specified input will likely be more effective than concentrating on the outcome.

    Recently a new science behind incentives (激励) , including in education, has been discussed. For example, researcher Roland Fryer wanted to see what works best in motivating children to do better in school. In some cases, he gave students incentives based on input, like reading certain books, while in others, the incentives were based on output, like results on exams. His main finding was that incentives increased achievement when based on input but had no effect on output. Fryer's conclusion was that the intensives for inputs might be more effective because do not know how to do better on exam, aside from general rules like “study harder.” Reading certain books, on the other hand, is a well-set task over which they have much more control.

    As long as you have direct control over your goal, you have a much higher chance of success. And it's easier to start again if you fail, because you know exactly what you need to do.

    If you want to cut down on your spending, a good goal would be making morning coffee at home instead of going to a cafe, for example. This is a well-specified action-based goal for which you can measure your success easily. Spending less money isn't a goal because it's too general. Similarly, if you want to spend more time with your family, don't stop with this general wish. Think about an actionable habit that you could adopt and stick to, like a family movie night every Wednesday.

    In the long run, these new goals could become a habit.

    Antarctica(南极洲)'s melting ice, which has caused global sea levels to rise by at least 13.8 millimeters over the past 40 years, was thought to primarily come from the unstable West Antarctic Ice Sheet(WAIS). Now, scientists have found that the East Antarctic Ice Sheet (EAIS)—considered largely unaffected by climate change—may also be melting at an unexpectedly rapid speed.

    The WAIS, whose base is below sea level, has long been considered the most likely to break down. Besides gravity, a deep current of warm water slips beneath the sheet, melting it from below until it becomes a floating shelf at risk of breaking away. In contrast, extreme cold and a base mostly above sea level are thought to keep the EAIS relatively safe from warm waters.

    But as greenhouse gases warm much of the planet, driving stronger polar winds, some scientists think warm water carried by a circular current will start to invade East Antarctica's once unassailable ice. A cooperation of more than 60 scientists last year, published in Nature, estimated that the EAIS actually added about 5 billion tons of ice each year from 1992 to 2017.

    Eric Rignot of the University of California, Irvine, and colleagues combined 40 years of satellite imagery and climate modeling and found that overall Antarctica now sends six times more ice into the sea each year than it did in 1979, with the majority coming from West Antarctica. But East Antarctica was responsible for more than 30% of Antarctica's contribution to the 13.8-millimeter sea level rise over the past 40 years. “The more we look at this system the more we realize this is fragile,” Rignot says. “Once these glaciers become unstable there is no red button to press to stop it.”

    Rignot hopes the study brings greater attention to a part of Antarctica that has traditionally been understudied. Helen Fricker, a glaciologist (冰川学家) in California, agrees. “We need to monitor the entire Antarctica and we just can't do that without international cooperation.”

    The movie The Wizard of Oz has thousands of fans around the world. But back in 1939 when the film opened, audiences were not particularly fond of it. It was only a modest box office success. It was nominated for Best Picture at that year's Academy Awards, but so were nine other great films. It lost out to Gone with the Wind.

    The Wizard of Oz really gained an audience when it was broadcast regularly on TV. That began in the 1950s. The film's plot follows young Dorothy who is knocked unconscious during a tornado. She dreams about following a Yellow Brick Road through the Land of Oz to the Emerald City. She wants to meet the Wizard of Oz who lives there. He's the only one who can help her to return home to Kansas. Along the way she makes friends with the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion. They help her and her dog Toto overcome the Wicked Witch of the West!

    According to the Library of Congress, The Wizard of Oz is the most watched movie of all time. What is it about the film that appeals to people? It includes themes that people can relate to. Through most of the movie Dorothy is trying to get home to Kansas. When she finally gets to go, she speaks the words, "there's no place like home." People identify with that thought. Home is the welcoming place where they feel secure.

    At the beginning of the film, Dorothy sings of a place "over the rainbow." There, the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true. So while home is a great place, dreaming about something different is all right too.

    The Wizard of Oz also deals with courage. Dorothy learns that true courage isn't being unafraid. It's facing danger when you are afraid. Her friends face plenty of danger to rescue her.

    As one of the true classics of American literature, The Wizard of Oz has stirred the imagination of young and old alike for over four generations. Celebrate the 80th year of this fabulous film by watching it again.

    You can't see your sleeping pets brain waves, but its behavior can tell you when your cat might be dreaming. If you watch closely, you'll see that as she falls asleep, her breathing becomes slow and regular with her body still. She has entered the first stage of sleep, called slow-wave sleep. After about 15 minutes you'll notice a change in her breathing. Her eyes move under her closed lids, her paws twitch (抽动) and she flicks (尤指用手指或手快速地轻抚) an ear. She has entered dreaming. Although she twitches and makes little grunting (嘟嘟) noises, messages from her brain to the large muscles in her legs are blocked, so she can't run about. She is in a state of "sleep paralysis (麻痹)".

    Michel Jouvet, a French scientist, interrupted their sleep paralysis. Even though they were completely asleep, the dreaming cats began to run for balls that Jouvet couldn't see and arched (弓起) their backs at unseen enemies. He figures he was watching them act out their dreams! Obviously, the dreaming cats seemed to be practising important cat skills: following, pouncing (猛扑), and fighting.

    In another study, Matt Wilson recorded rats brain waves while they learned mazes (迷宫). One day, he left the brain-wave-recording machine on while the rats fell asleep. The pattern of brain waves in the sleeping rats matched the pattern from the maze so closely that Wilson could figure out exactly which part of the maze each rat was dreaming about!

    Many researchers now think that in both people and animals, one purpose of dreams is to practise important skills and figure out recent caning. This may explain why so many people dream about fighting and escaping, skills that were probably important to our ancestors, and why dreaming affects our ability to learn.

    Do all animals dream? From looking at the brain waves of sleeping animals. How often animals dream seems to be tied to body size. Cats dream about every 15 minutes, mice every 9 minutes, and elephants every 2 hours. And though cows and horses usually sleep standing up, they only dream when lying down.

Grizzly bears,which may grow to about 2.5 m long and weigh over 400 kg,occupy a conflicted corner of the American psyche—we revere(敬畏) them even as they give us frightening dreams.Ask the tourists from around the world that flood into Yellowstone National Park what they most hope to see,and their answer is often the same:a grizzly bear.

"Grizzly bears are re-occupying large areas of their former range,"says bear biologist Chris Servheen.As grizzly bears expand their range into places where they haven't been seen in a century or more,they're increasingly being sighted by humans.

The western half of the U.S.was full of grizzlies when Europeans came,with a rough number of 50,000 or more living alongside Native Americans.By the early 1970s,after centuries of cruel and continuous hunting by settlers,600 to 800 grizzlies remained on a mere 2 percent of their former range in the Northern Rockies.In 1975,grizzlies were listed under the Endangered Species Act.

Today,there are about 2,000 or more grizzly bears in the U.S.Their recovery has been so successful that the U.S.Fish and Wildlife Service has twice attempted to de-list grizzlies,which would loosen legal protections and allow them to be hunted.Both efforts were overturned due to lawsuits from conservation groups.For now,grizzlies remain listed.

Obviously,if precautions(预防) aren't taken,grizzlies can become troublesome,sometimes killing farm animals or walking through yards in search of food.If people remove food and attractants from their yards and campsites,grizzlies will typically pass by without trouble.Putting electric fencing around chicken houses and other farm animal quarters is also highly effective at getting grizzlies away."Our hope is to have a clean,attractant-free place where bears can pass through without learning bad habits,"says James Jonkel,longtime biologist who manages bears in and around Missoula.