Scientists found that sleeping considerably improves our creativity. After taking a nap people are able to think faster and put more imagination into their thinking. Besides, if we dream, the thinking abilities are improved even more.

    Researchers consider that sleeping on a problem in most cases leads to elucidation(解释). They say when a person enters a phase called Rapid Eye Movement (REM) during sleep, it increases the effect. Such phase takes place right before we awake and according to scientists it helps our brain make links between unrelated subjects.

    In the study, led by Professor Sara Mednick, scientists made a conclusion that the REM was "important for assimilating(消化) new information into past experience" in order to find solutions to creative problems.

    Prof. Mednick is a psychiatrist at the University of California. Her study involved the analysis of 77 adults. Each participant was given several word-associated creative tasks. All tasks were given in the morning, with participants being shown a number of groups of 3 words, for example: cookie, heart and sixteen. They were asked to come up with a word that would be associated with all three given terms—like sweet. Sometime later, after some participants were allowed to sleep, they were asked to perform the same tasks and some new ones. It is worth mentioning that while some people slept, researchers used brain scans to see the type of sleep each participant entered.

    When given the same tasks, participants, who took a nap, were able to give more varied solutions, some of which were much better than they gave earlier. But when given new tasks, researchers found that those who entered REM sleep had a 40 percent better result compared to the performance they showed in the morning.

Weekend Photography Workshop(研讨班): Seattle Aims

Learn new techniques from a great photographer

Take photos of Pike Place Market, Bainbridge Island, and more

Activity Details

    Seattle is a fantastic place to photograph. Spend the weekend taking photos of the historic Pike Place Market, get a new angle on the Space Needle, and photograph harbor views on Bainbridge Island.

    This workshop is led by a great photographer and a professional instructor and is designed for people who are interested in improving their digital photography. All participants must bring a digital SLR camera(单反相机), a laptop, and the software for organizing and presenting images. The workshop is limited to 25 participants.

Plan – 3 Days

Day 1—Thursday: Seattle

    Settle into our hotel or stay in accommodations of your choice. Gather tonight at a restaurant in town for a welcome dinner.

Day 2—Friday: Pike Place Market & Pioneer Square

    Start the day in the classroom with an instructive talk by our photographer. Our first task this afternoon takes us to the oldest running farmers' market in the country, Pike Place Market. Work on portraits, street scenes, and food photographing. Then photograph the stately 19^th century brick buildings of Pioneer Square, Seattle's historic center. End the day with an edit-and-critic meeting.

Day 3—Saturday: Olympic Sculpture Park & Space Needle

    Head out to the Olympic Sculpture Park. Then go to the streets of the downtown area to get a unique view of the Space Needle, and photograph city life against a background of diverse architectural styles. Tonight, we'll present our best images to the group, enjoy dinner at a local restaurant and end our journey.

Cost

    Meals noted in the plan are included in both options(with and without hotel)

Dates

Jul 11 – 14, 2013     Aug 08—11, 2013       Sep 26 – 29, 2013

Contact Information

    For questions about this workshop, please call 1-886-797-4686. Or you can visit the website: http://www. nationalgeographicexpeditions.com.

    If you find yourself checking your phone first thing in the morning, if you find you're text-messaging while driving, checking your phone instead of working on an important assignment—you are addicted.

    Don't worry. The new NoPhone might be just the thing you need. It looks and feels exactly like a smartphone, but it does nothing. It's just a piece of plastic that you can carry around in your hand to fool yourself.

    NoPhone is currently a prototype(手机模型) that will cost only $12 once it hits the market. Its makers are trying to raise $30,000 in order to cover the production and marketing costs.

    Dutch designer Ingmar Larsen, who helped create the NoPhone, said that he had the idea as a joke along with his friends Van Gould and Ben Langveld. To their great surprise, the idea received a lot of attention online and people from all over the world started placing requests for NoPhone of their own, so that's when the three friends decided to raise money for mass production.

David H said," I used to sleep with my phone in my hand, but my night errors would cause me to throw it across the room in an unconscious panic. With the NoPhone, I can still enjoy the comfort of holding a phone in my sleep, without waking up to a shattered screen, thanks, NoPhone."

If you're interested in NoPhone, but concerned about not being able to takeselfies anymore, don't worry. The makers do have an update at no extra charge—the mirror sticker. That way, they say, you can enjoy "real-time" selfies with your friends when they're standing right behind you.

    Happy, angry, amazed—these are some of the emotions we like to express these days when we're sending a message on our smart phones. That's why many of us now add little pictures to our texts to brighten up someone's mobile screen but we're also using them as a quick way of telling someone how we're feeling. Yes, emojis have become a vital tool for communication.

    Let's clear one thing up first—there are emojis and emoticons (表情符号). The latter are little images made using normal keys on a keyboard. For example, a colon, two dots, followed by the curved line of a close brackets is a “smiley face”.

    The emoji was first invented in Japan in the late 1990s and the word “emoji” comes from the Japanese words for “picture” and “character”. The number of different images has dramatically increased since then and now we have a picture for every mood or situation.

    So now we have the option to give this new creation the visual “thumbs-up” but have you thought why we've become so addicted to using emojis? Professor Vyv Evans who has written a book called The Emoji Code says, “What we're finding is that digital communication is taking over from certain aspects of face-to-face interaction…One of the reasons emojis are so interesting is that they really do enable us to express our emotional selves much more effectively.”

    Another advantage of emojis is that they are an international language—they don't use words but tell a message in pictorial form so they can be easily interpreted whatever your native language.

    Emojis are a good way for showing empathy (共鸣)—they are a virtual hug or an adorable tease. But as linguist Neil Cohn says, “To many, emojis are an exciting evolution of the way we communicate while to others, they are linguistic (语言学的) Armageddon.” It does show there is a lot more to our communication than words alone but does this mean the decline in traditional writing?

    In the famous fairy tale, Snow White eats the Queen's apple and falls victim to a curse(诅咒);in Shakespeare's novel, Romeo drinks the poison and dies; some ancient Chinese emperors took pellets(药丸)that contained mercury(水银), believing that it would make them immortal, but they died afterward.

    Poison(毒药) has long been an important ingredient in literature and history, and it seems to always be associated with evil, danger and death. But how much do you really know about poison?

    An exhibition, The Power of Poison, opened last month at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, intended to give the audience a more vivid understanding of poison.

    The museum tour starts in a rainforest setting, where you can see live examples of some of the most poisonous animals: caterpillars(毛毛虫), frogs and spiders. Golden poison frogs, for instance, aren't much bigger than a coin, but their skin is covered with a poison that can cut off the signaling power of your nerves, and a single frog has enough venom to kill 10 grown humans.

    "Poisons can be bad for some things," Michael Novacek, senior vice president of the museum, told NBC News. "Yet they can also be good for others."

    A poisonous chemical found in the yew tree is effective against cancer, which is what led to the invention of a cancer-fighting drug called Taxol.

    The benefits from natural poisons are not limited to just medicine. Believe it or not, many substances(物质)that we regularly ingest(摄入)-chili, coffee and chocolate-owe their special flavors or stimulating(提神的)effects to chemicals that plants make to poison insects.

    Mid-afternoon on a particularly busy Tuesday, I took leave of my desk at work and walked into a local Starbucks, only to find a space where neither my clients (客户) nor my children would ask me to do something.

    Inside, I ran into Kate, a co-worker of mine. The topic of parenthood came up. I complained about how packed my schedule was. From the minute I woke up to the minute I fell asleep, I was constantly in demand and always had someone knocking at the door. But a bit of sadness seemed to come over Kate's face.

    "Well, my daughter's in San Francisco and she doesn't seem to need me at all these days." Kate said. It was in that moment that I realized although I might often feel in high demand, there will come a day when I'll actually miss that same stress I now complain about.

    And as our conversation continued, it turned to our children's younger years, with Kate smiling proudly, thinking of the little boy and girl she raised who are now a man and a woman. But I noticed her smile was marked with regret. She explained that she often wondered about what she could have done differently when her children were in their earlier years.

    This got me thinking Is regret an unfortunate footnote (注脚) to parenthood? With that in mind, I asked six older parents one question: What is your biggest regret from your early days as a parent?

    It turned out that all of them thought they could have done it better. But, each of them also has a strong, healthy relationship with their kids. Whatever regrets their parents might have had about their upbringing, one thing is clear—it didn't affect them in a meaningful way.

    The bottom line is, we all feel like we could be doing this parenting thing better, And quite clearly, years later, we're still going to look back and wish we tried things differently. But the past can't be changed, and neither should it.