Our spiritual intelligence quotient(精神智商), or SQ, helps us understand ourselves, and live fuller, happier lives.

    Though we're all born with SQ, most of us don't even realize that we have it. Fortunately, you don't have to sign up for classes to learn how to improve your SQ. Here are some simple steps that can lead you to this new level of understanding.

    Sit Quietly. The process of developing spiritual intelligence begins with solitude(独处) and silence. To tune in to your spirit, you have to turn down the volume(强度) in your busy, noisy, complicated life and force yourself to do nothing at all. Start small by creating islands for silence in your day. In the car, instead of listening to the music, use the time to think. At work, shut the door to your office between meetings, take a few breaths and let them out very, very slowly. Enjoy the stillness in your home after the kids are finally in bed.

    Step Outside. For many people, nature sets their spirit free. Go outside to watch a beautiful sunset. If you are walking with the dog, take the time to admire flowers in bloom; follow the flight of a bird and watch clouds float overhead.

    Ask Questions of Yourself. Ask open-ended questions, such as ‘What am I Feeling? What are my choices? Where am I heading?'

    But don't expect an answer to arrive through some supernatural forms of e-mail. ‘Rarely do I get an immediate answer to my question,' says Reverend Joan Carter, a Presbyterian minister in Sausalito, California. ‘But later that day I suddenly find myself thinking about a problem in a perspective(角度) I never considered before.'

    Trust Your Spirit. While most of us rely on gut(本能的) feeling to realize danger, spiritual intelligence pushes us, not away from, but towards some action that will lead to a greater good.

    I was selfish as a teenager. I usually spent my time thinking about myself and taking care of my own needs. I let my older brother do most of the work around the house until he left for college. I let my mom and dad worry about our bills and problems while I read books, played, and lost myself in my own imagination. This didn't change even when I went to college either. I studied hard but only to make my own life better. Even when I started to explore my faith, it was only to increase my own happiness.

    I married after graduation and decided to start a family. Of course, I had no idea what hard knocks reality had in store for my selfish soul. Soon I found myself unemployed, deeply in debt, and with a new baby on the way. l found out that life has little sympathy for spoiled people. In fact, all of the struggles I was going through were beating the selfishness slowly out of me.

    Still, I didn't give up on happiness. I knew that there must be a way to find it. I finally realized, however, that it had to include more than just my own needs, wants, and desires. The answer began to make itself clear one night shortly after my baby boy was born. I got a bottle and held him in my arms. As I was feeding him I looked down and saw his big, innocent, trusting eyes. I smiled and talked to him. Then he smiled and I could feel my heart growing, expanding with love. I felt such peace and joy. At that moment I had a hint of the truth: it is by growing our hearts with love that we find our happiness.

    Carolyn Arends wrote: "The more people you let into your heart, the bigger your heart gets. The more love you get, the more love you have to give. It just keeps growing." So, keep loving, keep living and keep caring. Keep growing your heart today, tomorrow, and always.

Life in the Clear

    Transparent animals let light pass through their bodies the same way light passes through a window. These animals typically live between the surface of the ocean and a depth of about 3,300 feet — as far as most light can reach. Most of them are extremely delicate and can be damaged by a simple touch. Sonke Johnsen, a scientist in biology, says, "These animals live through their life alone. They never touch anything unless they're eating it, or unless something is eating them."

    And they are as clear as glass. How does an animal become see­through? It's trickier than you might think.

    The objects around you are visible because they interact with light.  Light typically travels in a straight line. But some materials slow and scatter (散射) light, bouncing it away from its original path. Others absorb light, stopping it dead in its tracks.  Both scattering and absorption make an object look different from other objects around it, so you can see it easily.

    But a transparent object doesn't absorb or scatter light, at least not very much. Light can pass through it without bending or stopping. That means a transparent object doesn't look very different from the surrounding air or water. You don't see it — you see the things behind it.

    To become transparent, an animal needs to keep its body from absorbing or scattering light. Living materials can stop light because they contain pigments (色素) that absorb specific colors of light. But a transparent animal doesn't have pigments, so its tissues won't absorb light. According to Johnsen, avoiding absorption is actually easy. The real challenge is preventing light from scattering.

    Animals are built of many different materials — skin, fat, and more — and light moves through each at a different speed. Every time light moves into a material with a new speed, it bends and scatters. Transparent animals use different tricks to fight scattering. Some animals are simply very small or extremely flat.  Without much tissue to scatter light, it is easier to be see­through. Others build a large, clear mass of non­living jelly­lie (果冻状的) material and spread themselves over it.

    Larger transparent animals have the biggest challenge, because they have to make all the different tissues in their bodies slow down light exactly as much as water does. They need to look uniform. But how they're doing it is still unknown. One thing is clear for these larger animals, staying transparent is an active process.  When they die, they turn a non­transparent milky white.

    University of New South Wales has launched its new 12-month Women in Maths & Science Champions Program designed to give women the skills and confidence to build their public recognition and set up a connected network of women in maths and science. The first group of 30 female PhD students started in August this year, and the second group of 19 early- career researchers was formally announced yesterday.

    Over the 12 months, the champions complete at least 20 hours of related activities as part of a community of representatives who will influence and inspire women to pursue a career in maths and science. The activities are varied, ranging from visiting schools and conducting science presentations, to attending conferences and creating content for social media. At the end of the program, PhD champions have the chance to apply everything they've learned to the Postgraduate Research Competition. Above all, participating is a requirement for program completion.

    Rose O'Dea, a member of the first group, is a PhD candidate at the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences. She said, "I'm excited about the opportunity to work with school children. I hope to inspire some girls so they see not all scientists are older men in lab coals and that science is quite diverse and means different things depending on who you are."

    Dr. Mariana Mayer Pinto is an early-career researcher at the School of Biological, Earth and Environmental Sciences, where she mainly works with marine (海洋的) ecologists. She is originally from Brazil and said that being a woman from a developing country meant she knew the struggles that lack of role models can create. "You can't be what you can't see! I always have the hope that I can change the world bit by bit, and if one little girl says she can become a scientist because I talked to them, that'd be awesome, and that would make everything worth it."

On the day the tornado hit, there was no indication severe weather was on its way—the sky was blue and the sun had been out. The first alert my husband, Jimmy, 67, and I, 65, got came around 9 p. m. , from some scrolling text on the TV Jimmy was watching. He ran upstairs to find me in our third-floor bedroom, and we changed the channel from the presidential primary debate I had been watching to our local Pensacola, Florida, station.

No sooner had we found coverage of the tornado than it was on top of us. It was the loudest thing I have ever heard. The bones of the house shook, and the power went out. Pink insulation flew into the room from a trapdoor to the attic, and the wind began to roar through the house.

I didn't know how or if we would make it down the steps. It felt as if there were no floor underneath me as the wind lifted me off my feet. I gripped the banister (栏杆) and tried to move forward, but this intense pressure held me in place.

By the time I reached the closet, the tornado had been over us for about a minute. Jimmy pushed me down to the closet floor, but he couldn't get inside himself because of the wind. I gripped Jimmy's arm. My knees and scalp were full of glass, but in that moment, I felt no pain.

All of a sudden, Jimmy lifted off his feet like people in tornadoes do in the movies. I thought he was gone. And then everything stopped. He landed on his feet. In those first quiet moments, I couldn't believe it was over. Jimmy said he'd go outside to check. "No," I said. "Don't leave me. "

Our neighbor says the storm lasted four minutes. In that time, four of the twelve town houses in our unit were completely destroyed. Of the houses left standing, ours suffered the most damage. Amazingly, none of us were severely injured.

Bruce, a parrot missing part of his beak （喙）,  creatively uses stones to clean feathers （羽毛）,  highlighting advanced intelligence in parrots. 

Bruce lost the upper part of his beak in 2012 and was sent to live at a reserve in New Zealand. The defect made Bruce unable to search for food on his own, let alone keep his feathers clean with his beak. But in 2021, when comparative psychologist Bastos arrived at the reserve with colleagues to study parrots, zookeepers reported something strange：Bruce had seemingly figured out how to select and use small stones to clean his own feathers with his beak. 

Over nine days, the team kept a close eye on Bruce, quickly taking, videos if he started cleaning his feathers. It turned out that Bruce had indeed invented his own way to do so, the researchers reported in Scientific Reports. 

"It's crazy because the behavior was not from the wild, " Bastos says. When Bruce arrived at the reserve, he was too young to learn how to clean his feathers. And no other bird in the reserve uses stones in this way. "It seems like he just invented this tool use for himself, " she says. 

Tool use is just one of parrots' many talents. They're famous for copying and even understanding human speech. Some species can also solve complex puzzles, like how to enter a covered rubbish bin or practice self-control. 

For a concept as abstract （抽象的） as intelligence, it's challenging to develop a definition that applies across animals. Researchers often point to features once thought to make humans special—enhanced learning, memory, attention and movement control—as signs of advanced skills. However, many of these abilities can also be seen in parrots, as well as other animals like chimpanzees, dolphins and elephants. 

"Parrots are our evolutionary （进化的） mirror image. These brilliant birds may teach us about how humanlike intelligence can appear, " behavioral ecologist Antone wrote in his 2022 book The Parrot in the Mirror. With powerful brains and a preference for words, these birds are "the very best example, " he writes,  "of nature's 'other try' at humanlike intelligence. "