Many parents have learned the hard way that what sounds like open communication is often the very thing that closes a youngster's ears and mouth. One common mistake is the Lecture, the long monologue that often starts with “When I was your age” Eighteen-year-old Kelly calls lectures “long, one-side discussions in which I don't say much.”

    Kids reflexively(条件反射地)shut down in the face of a lecture. Their eyes glaze over(呆滞),and they don't register any incoming information. Listen to 13-year-old Sarah describe her least favorite times with her mom and dad. “First, they scream. Then comes the ‘We're so disappointed' speech. Then the ‘I never did that to my parents' lecture begins. After that, even if they realize how ridiculous they sound they never take it back.”

    Lines like “When you have children of your own, you'll understand” have been seriously said by parents since time immemorial. But many of our expert parents, like Bobby, a registered nurse and mother of three, feel that by falling back on clichés(陈词滥调)to justify your actions, we weaken our position.

    Since kids are creatures of here and now, the far-off future has no relevance to them. Therefore, good communicators like Bobby suggest, “Give specific reasons for your actions in present language: ‘I'm not letting you go to the party because I don't think there will be enough adult supervisions.'”

    Betty, who lives in Missouri, uses an indirect approach. “I find that warnings are accepted more readily if I discuss a news article on a subject I am concerned about. My husband and I talk about it while our children absorb the information. Then they never think I'm preaching(布道).”

This really helped when Betty's kids began driving. Instead of constantly repeating “Don't drink; don't speed,” she would talk about articles in the paper and express sympathy for the victims of a car crash. Betty made no special effort to draw her kids into the conversation. She depended on a teenager's strong desire to put in his opinions—especially if he thinks he isn't being asked for them.

    The most important lessons in life that we need to learn are the results of our poor decisions. Although time and experience are the best teachers, we also suffer from experiences such as our sacrifices, suffering and the hardships. Good judgment develops only when we truly learn from our mistakes. However, many people keep repeating the same mistakes before learning their lessons because as they say, they are just humans who are subject to making mistakes.

Our weaknesses in life can be turned into our strengths if we immediately acknowledge and recognize the fact that we mess up and learn from them. Our good or bad experiences help us learn better judgment in life. Yet, too many people are in denial and place the blame on others without realizing that the minute they take responsibility for their action is when the learning process begins. Apart from learning from our own experience, we can also learn valuable lessons from the experience of others. It allows us to observe our behavior from another angle. When we recognize our mistakes and prevent them from happening again, we are, therefore, learning.

    Quickly identifying our mistakes and changing behavior accordingly requires less time and energy than denying mistakes. However, acknowledgement of mistakes requires belief in the idea that the perfection is not possible.

    It is easier to analyze our mistakes especially when we talk to others, which can help people to sort out comments or criticisms after a mistake is made. Despite our tendency to avoid mistakes, timely acknowledgement is one of the best ways to prevent them from repeating.

    Last year, three experienced storm chasers were killed in a tornado(龙卷风)in the US, but despite this the number of people going in search of tornadoes is growing. What drives them to take risks and look for danger? The man at the wheel glanced in the back-view mirror and then slowly turned around. "Don't put this in your program." he said. His wife in the passenger seat laughed. He lowered the window and killed the engine. The wind rushed in from surrounding wheat fields.

    Then, from behind, the sound of footsteps approached on the dirt road. It was a moment of peace after hours of speedy racing through the American grassland. There had been excited shouts about where a tornado might form and how we would be there if it did. We were crazy on the trail a moment ago. But now, everyone was very cool. A Kansas state trooper(骑警) introduced himself through the window. There was pretended surprise when he said how fast we had been going. Really? Wow, sorry.

    Val Cator handed over his driver's license. His wife, Amy, took the registration out of the glove box. Val explained they were storm chasers with Channel 9 News out of Oklahoma City—though it was hardly necessary. Their huge black truck has lightning bolts(闪电)and Storm Tracker 9 painted on the sides.

    Val pointed to the radar on the laptop open next to him and said those red and green dots suggested a tornado could form this afternoon. The state trooper was untouched. "I've got that in my car too." he said. People here keep a close eye on the weather. It's part of living in the tornado alley. Every year some town or other is blown off the map by tornadoes that can reach 300 miles an hour.

    Val and Amy are just two of hundreds of possibly thousands of trackers who speed around with computers and cameras hoping to catch one of these beautiful, deadly storms. I'd joined them to learn why the number of trackers keeps growing. Why are people taking real risks—beyond the steady diet of rest-stop junk food—to watch weather?

    Last year, a tornado killed three of the most experienced storm chasers. It picked up and threw their car as easily as you would a piece of paper. Dozens of other chasers were hurt in the same storm. They were crowded on a few roads when the tornado suddenly expanded and ate them. Val and Amy were there that day but still, in their words, chase aggressively.

    Human began farming around 12,000 years ago, and only in the past 50 years have scientists realized we're not the only species to research into agriculture. A new study has revealed that a small Fijian ant species beat us to becoming the first farmers by almost three millions years.

    The ants have been observed carefully sowing seeds, fertilizing (施肥) them, and waiting for them to grow into plants which bear tasty fruit. What led to the formation of this relationship remains a mystery to scientists. But it puts the ants millions of years ahead of the first human societies to use farming techniques.

    The newly discovered relationship is unique to the animal kingdom. Researchers say they have already watched ants spread seeds, and ants feed plants, but they never had a case where they farm a plant they can't live without. The ants rely on the plants for shelter and food, while the plants need the ants to sow and spread their seeds.

    The find puts the ants millions of years ahead of the first human societies to use farming techniques, who began using agriculture around 12,000 years ago.

    As the plants grow under the care of the ants, the plants to keep further growth. Once the plant is big enough, its hollow chambers provide shelter for the ants. It had previously been spotted that the ants like to live in these small chambers, but the Munich researchers have uncovered the true nature of the relationship that ants sow and take care of the plants to grow themselves a new home.

    The ants will eat the fruit of the plant and harvest their seeds for further projects.

While many other examples of mutually (相互地) beneficial relationships between ants and plants exist, the discovery marks the only case in which both parties other for are totally dependent on each other survival.

    Like infectious diseases, ideas in the academic world are epidemic (传染的). But why some travel far and wide while equally good ones has been a mystery? Now a team of computer scientists has used an epidemiological model to simulate (模仿) how ideas move from one academic institution to another. The model showed that ideas originating at famous institutions caused bigger "epidemics" than equally good ideas from less famous places, explains Allison Morgan, a computer scientist at the University of Colorado Boulder.

    "This implies that where an idea is born shapes how far it spreads," says senior author Aaron Clauset.

    Not only is this unfair— "it reveals a big weakness in how we're doing science," says Simon DeDeo, a professor of social and decision sciences at Carnegie Mellon university, who was not involved in the study. "There are many highly trained people with good ideas who do not end up at top institutions. They are producing good ideas, and we know those ideas are getting lost," DeDeo says. "Our science, our scholarships, is not as good because of this."

    The Colorado researchers first looked at how five big ideas in computer science spread to new institutions. They found that hiring a new faculty member accounted for this movement a little more than a third of the time--and in 81 percent of those cases, transmissions took place from higher – to lower-prestige (声望) universities. Then the team simulated the spread of ideas using an infectious disease model and found that the size of an idea "epidemic" depended on the prestige of the originating institution.

    The researchers' model suggests that there "may be a number of quite good ideas that originate in the middle of the pack, in terms of universities." Clauset says. There is a lot of good work coming out of less famous places, he says: "You can learn a huge amount from it, and you can learn things that other people don't know because they're not even paying attention."

    Video producer and musician Justin Scholar enjoyed his fantastic moment weeks ago when he spotted his latest work playing on a huge electronic screen at New York's Times Square.

    "It's sort of the American dream to see your name up inlights,'' says the 25-year-old New Jersey native. “I'd never really cared about my name being that big, but going to New York and seeing the big screens, you always wonder if your work is going to make it up there.

    The video that helps Scholar fulfill his "American dream" was shot and produced in China, where Scholar is living and working as a media company owner. Scholar took his first Chinese class in high school seven years ago and made his first trip to Shanghai in 2015 through a study-abroad program when he was a student in New York University. The film and TV major changed his focus from technical art to traditional arts during his study in Shanghai, spending most of the time learning ink-and-wash painting, calligraphy and the guzheng, a traditional Chinese musical instrument. He also fell in love with the city, where he ate a lot of authentic xiaolongbao, or steamed meat buns, and felt safe walking on the streets at 3 am.

    Shanghai impresses Scholar as an efficient, modern city calling for greater business prosperity with foreign participation, so he returned two years later, when his career at home was already booming after making commercials for big names such as Coca-Cola and Jaguar.

    Thanks to a combination of luck and talent, he achieved the goal soon with a Chinese friend as his business partner, and the company has already produced some 15 videos for pop icons, fashionistas, and art museums in merely six months. The video that plays at Times Square, a tourism promotionalfilm for southwest China's Chongqing city, is the company's first project contracted(签合同) by a local government in China.