Imagine you are in a jumping contest. Animals and insects can also enter this contest. But they might just leave humans in the dust!

    The first event is the long jump. The human athlete is Mike Powell. In 1991, he jumped nearly 30 feet, which is the world record for the long jump. That is about five times his own height.

    His competitor in the long-jump contest is a frog named “Rosie the Ribbiter.” Rosie set the world record for frogs in 1986 by jumping more than 21 feet. Her record has never been broken by any other frog. Compared to Mike Powell, Rosie's jump is not that amazing. But wait! Rosie is only about 10 inches long when her legs are stretched to their full length. She can jump more than 25 times her size. Rosie, the frog, wins the long-jump event.

    The next event is the high jump. Javier Sotomayor, the world record holder, can jump a bar (横杆) 8 feet high. That is about as high as the ceiling in most homes.

    Looking around for someone to challenge his record, Javier might need a magnifying glass (放大镜). The next contestant is a tiny insect called the spittlebug (吹沫虫).

    The spittlebug can jump 28 inches into the air. It is only a quarter-inch long, less than the width of a pencil. If the spittlebug were the same size as Javier, it would be able to jump 600 feet into the air. That is like a human jumping over a building 55 stories high!

    Though the humans lose the “jumping contest,” their competitors would probably agree that Mike and Javier are still pretty excellent athletes. If only Rosie and the spittlebug could speak!

    A team of engineers at Harvard University has been inspired by Nature to create the first robotic fly. The mechanical fly has become a platform for a series of new high-tech integrated systems. Designed to do what a fly does naturally, the tiny machine is the size of a fat housefly. Its mini wings allow it to stay in the air and perform controlled flight tasks.

    “It's extremely important for us to think about this as a whole system and not just the sum of a bunch of individual components (元件),” said Robert Wood, the Harvard engineering professor who has been working on the robotic fly project for over a decade. A few years ago, his team got the go-ahead to start piecing together the components. “The added difficulty with a project like this is that actually none of those components are off the shelf and so we have to develop them all on our own,” he said.

    They engineered a series of systems to start and drive the robotic fly. “The seemingly simple system which just moves the wings has a number of interdependencies on the individual components, each of which individually has to perform well, but then has to be matched well to everything it's connected to,” said Wood. The flight device was built into a set of power, computation, sensing and control systems. Wood says the success of the project proves that the flying robot with these tiny components can be built and manufactured.

    While this first robotic flyer is linked to a small, off-board power source, the goal is eventually to equip it with a built-in power source, so that it might someday perform data-gathering work at rescue sites, in farmers' fields or on the battlefield. “Basically it should be able to take off, land and fly around,” he said.

    Wood says the design offers a new way to study flight mechanics and control at insect-scale. Yet, the power, sensing and computation technologies on board could have much broader applications. “You can start thinking about using them to answer open scientific questions, you know, to study biology in ways that would be difficult with the animals, but using these robots instead,” he said. “So there are a lot of technologies and open interesting scientific questions that are really what drives us on a day to day basis.”

B

    According to a new study ,a smiley face emoji（笑脸符）in work-related e-mails may not create a positive impression and could even weaken information sharing. In formal business emails, a smiley is not a smile.

    In one of the experiments, people were asked to read a work-related e-mail from an unknown person and then tell about both the ability and warmth of that person. Before that, they all received similar messages. But some included smileys while others did not. The results suggested that contrary to face-to-face smiles, which increase both ability and warmth, the smileys in a business e-mail had no effect on the perception（感知）of warmth, and in fact had a bad effect on the perception of ability. The perceptions of low ability in turn weakened information sharing.

    In another experiment, the use of a smiley was compared to a smiling or neutral photograph. The findings showed that in the case（情况）of a photograph, a smiling sender was judged to be more able and friendly than a neutral one. However, when an e-mail on formal work-related maters included a smiley, the sender was thought to be less able. The smiley did not influence the opinion on the sender's friendliness.

    “People are easy to accept that a smiley equals a real smile, but the findings of this study show that in the workplace, this seems not the case, especially when first communications are concerned.” Dr. Glikson says. “In such a situation, it is better not to use smileys to people at whatever age. Smileys could hardly be a wise choice to a person you are not familiar with.”

    Your colleague's sharp comment keeps replaying in your mind. Two of your students are trapped in a "he said/she said" battle. When you reflect on your emotional reactions, you sometimes get caught up in cycles of negative feelings, which can make you feel even worse. If so, the answer may lie in a skill called "self-distancing", the ability to take a step back and view yourself more objectively. According to a research, when people adopt self-distancing while discussing a difficult event, they make better sense of their reactions, experience less emotional suffering, and display fewer signs of stress.

    But what might self-distancing look like in action? Consider a typical "he said/she said" student conflict where they are each focusing on their own feelings. One is thinking, "I can't believe he did that to me." And another insists, "She really hurt my feelings." However, if you ask them to take the self-distancing, they might step outside of themselves and ask broader questions: "Why was he so hurt in this situation?" or "How did her anger affect him?"

    Although this approach may sound too simple to be effective, studies indicate that a change in point of view can have a powerful effect on the way people think, feel, and behave. Here are several different techniques you can try.

    First, consider how a thoughtful friend might respond after quietly observing their situation. Besides, avoid using the pronoun "I". Focus on using third-person pronouns, he, she, they, and they were able to see the stressful event as challenging rather than threatening. Finally, ask yourself, "How would I feel about this one week from now or ten years from now?" This form of mental time travel may be effective because our attention is directed away from our immediate, concrete circumstances.

    When you think of batteries, you'll likely think about them powering up remote controls, cellphones, flashlights and toys. But some people carry a battery around in their body to power a pacemaker (起搏器). It isn't really pleasant and easy to carry batteries because they need to be replaced so often and they can leak poisonous chemicals. A battery-powered pacemaker may become a thing of the past, thanks to a new technology developed by UCLA researchers: A biological super capacitor (超级电容器) , which is thinner than several hairs.

    Teams of researchers at UCLA and the University of Connecticut published a paper in a journal explaining their new invention. The super capacitor is made from a carbon material, and coated with human-like proteins that act as electrodes (电极). But what makes the device different is that it is powered by an energy harvester that changes body heat and movement in the blood into energy.

    Those traditional pacemakers are six to eight millimeters(毫米) thick. They are much bigger. The new super capacitor, which, due to its lack of battery, is only one micrometer(微米) thick. This "little" feature could benefit the new pacemaker's energy efficiency, researchers stated. Also, unlike other batteries used in medical treatments, the super capacitor can bend and twist in the body without suffering damage.

    Though they've not been widely used in the medical world, super capacitors have the ability to serve as a safer and more efficient medical device than the traditional battery-operated devices, the researchers believe.

    "In order to be effective, battery free pacemakers must have super capacitors that can get, store and transport energy. However, commercial super capacitors are too slow to make them work", said Maher El-Kady, a UCLA researcher and co-author of the study. “Our research focused on the custom-designed super capacitor to capture energy effectively, and finding a way to make it exist together successfully with the human body."

    When it comes to medical care, many patients and doctors believe "more is better." But what they do not realize is that overtreatment—too many scans, too many blood tests, too many procedures—may bring harm. Sometimes a test leads you down a path to more and more testing, some of which may be invasive, or to treatment for things that should be left alone.

    Terrence Power, for example, complained that after his wife learned she had Wegener's disease, an uncommon disorder of the immune system, they found it difficult to refuse testing recommended by her doctor. The doctor insisted on office visits every three weeks, even when she was feeling well. He frequently ordered blood tests and X－rays, and repeatedly referred her to specialists for even minor complaints. Even when tests came back negative, more were ordered, and she was hospitalized as prevention when she developed a cold. She had as many as 25 doctor visits during one six－month period. The couple was spending about $30,000 a year for her care.

    After several years of physical suffering and near financial ruin from the medical costs, the couple began questioning the treatment after discussing with other patients in online support groups. "It's a really hard thing to determine when they've crossed the line," Mr. Power said. "You think she's getting the best care in the world, but after a while you start to wonder: What is the purpose?" Mr. Power then spoke with his own primary care doctor, who advised him to find a new specialist to oversee Mrs. Power's care. Under the new doctor's care, the regular testing stopped and Mrs. Power's condition stabilized. Now she sees the doctor only four or five times a year.