Most Popular Editorials: How to Get Better at Reading People from Different Cultures

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How to Get Better at Reading People from Different Cultures Body language varies from culture to culture, but microexpressions—very brief flashes of emotion across the face—are universal. So the ability to read them can be an effective took for navigating cross-cultural situations. If you study the common ones, look for them in your counterparts, and effectively interpret them, you have a better chance of avoiding misunderstandings and building bridges with people from different parts of the world. Continued here

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How Much Protein Do You Actually Need? When it comes to basic nutrition, there’s arguably no more important building block than protein. Protein, most people know, is essential for repairing and rebuilding muscle tissue, but it also serves other crucial purposes. You need protein to make organs and skin. You need protein to produce hair, blood, and connective tissue. Protein produces enzymes and neurotransmitters. It also keeps your immune system in top shape. Continued here

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How to Stay Cool When You’re Put on the Spot Work is full of difficult moments where people catch you off guard and make you feel defensive. It’s hard to predict when they’ll occur and how they’ll play out, but you can prepare for them. The author presents a four-step framework to give you an opportunity to respond thoughtfully and confidently in these high-stakes moments. First, take a moment to focus your mind after the initial shock. Second, question your assumptions. Third, depersonalize the interaction, and focus on what’s getting in the way. Finally, close the interaction with confidence. Continued here

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What Turtles Can Teach Humans About the Science of Slow Aging There are three ways to die: of injury, disease, or old age. Over time, humans have gotten better at avoiding the first two, but as we get older, senescence—the gradual deterioration of bodily functions with age—is inevitable. Some species seem to do better than others, though: Take the hydra, a tiny freshwater creature that some scientists have deemed potentially immortal. Last year, a naked mole rat made headlines for turning 39, five times the typical lifespan for similarly sized rodents. And just a few months ago, a giant Aldabra tortoise named Jonathan celebrated what was believed to be his 190th birthday, making him the world’s oldest living land animal. Continued here

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Paradox Mindset: The Source of Remarkable Creativity in Teams “The experience was magical. I had enjoyed collaborative work before, but this was something different,” said Daniel Kahneman of the beginnings of his years-long partnership with fellow psychologist Amos Tversky that culminated in a Nobel Prize in economic sciences three decades later. Continued here

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An ancient technique can improve your attention span Does this sound familiar? You can’t focus. You’re bored one minute, overwhelmed the next, and stressed either way. You make mistakes you shouldn’t and then dwell on them for hours. When you try to be productive, you can’t go five minutes without checking your texts, dreading some future engagement, or walking into another room to check on … something. (What was it again?) Continued here

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Why most diets don’t work—and what to try instead Most people who go on diets don't maintain their weight loss. But evidence suggests that focusing on other health metrics can actually be better for you. Continued here

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Your brain may be sabotaging your financial or career success -- and it's due to how you were raised A 2021 report by researchers at George Washington University showed that 50% of surveyed U.S. adults felt stressed when discussing their personal finances, and 60% experienced anxiety just thinking about their finances. Continued here

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‘There’s a Recession Coming’: The Rich Rush to Offload Luxury Properties After a decade of feeling invincible, the tech industry is suddenly facing something new: financial insecurity. Valuations are down, layoffs are up, startup funding no longer feels limitless, and an air of fear has started to permeate the sector, as bosses and workers alike adjust to a harsher version of reality.  Continued here

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Economics made simple: 10 experts on where the cost of living crisis came from, and where it’s heading Rampant inflation, war in Ukraine, fuel poverty, Brexit… we ask 10 experts to explain - for absolute beginners - what the economic crisis means for Britain and how we should respond Continued here

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The case for caring less To say that our plates are full would be an understatement. The reality of contemporary living requires our attention and efforts be divided between demanding jobs, essential familial caregiving, replenishing social gatherings, and fulfilling political and community engagements — not to mention any hobbies or creative endeavors. According to Pew Research Center surveys, 60 percent of adults said they were sometimes too busy to enjoy life. Busy-ness, unsurprisingly, intensifies once you have kids: 74 percent of parents with children under the age of 18 reported being too busy to enjoy life. Continued here

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The Powerful Role of Magical Beliefs in Our Everyday Thinking Adults often deny believing in magic, but on closer inspection, much of our behavior is more magical than we think. Eugene Subbotsky, who for over 40 years has studied the development of magical thinking, has suggested that in adults, magical beliefs are simply suppressed and can be reactivated given the appropriate conditions. His research also suggests that when denial of a magical belief is costly, adults are happy to give up their belief in the power of physical causality and view the world in terms of magical explanations. Continued here

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How one institution keeps claiming math’s highest award Even before this year’s Fields Medal winners announcement, the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques (IHES) or the Institute of Advanced Scientific Studies, boasted a remarkable statistic. Since its founding in 1958, the institute has had 12 permanent mathematics professors; seven of them had won a Fields Medal, considered to be the Nobel Prize in mathematics. On July 5, Hugo Duminil-Copin was named a recipient of this year’s prize, and the IHES extended its remarkable record to eight. “I am extremely glad that Hugo won the Fields Medal. We were betting on him to win the prize this year,” IHES director Emmanuel Ullmo told Ars Technica. Continued here

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How to think for yourself | Psyche Guides Schopenhauer and Proust can help you find inspiration from your favourite writers while also retaining an independent mind.Each of us has, I hope, at one point in time discovered a thinker whose writing captures exactly what we think, or have been trying to think, but couldn't find the right words to say. As the poet Alexander Pope wrote in 1711, in self-fulfilling lines: 'True wit is nature to advantage dress'd,/ What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd...' Regular readers of Aeon+Psyche will be familiar with the dilemma that such a discovery poses: the powerful influence of this great mind, who promises to broaden the horizons of your thinking, is at the same time so potentially overwhelming that it threatens your ability to think for yourself. What was supposed to help expand your mind may, in fact, close it. How, then, to keep it open? Continued here

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Depression is probably not caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain - new study A new shows there’s no clear evidence that depression is caused by abnormally low levels of serotonin in the brain.For three decades, people have been deluged with information suggesting that depression is caused by a "chemical imbalance" in the brain - namely an imbalance of a brain chemical called serotonin. However, our latest research review shows that the evidence does not support it.Although first proposed in the 1960s, the serotonin theory of depression started to be widely promoted by the pharmaceutical industry in the 1990s in association with its efforts to market a new range of antidepressants, known as selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors or SSRIs. The idea was also endorsed by official institutions such as the American Psychiatric Association, which still tells the public that "differences in certain chemicals in the brain may contribute to symptoms of depression".Countless doctors have repeated the message all over the world, in their private surgeries and in the media. People accepted what they were told. And many started taking antidepressants because they believed they had something wrong with their brain that required an antidepressant to put right. In the period of this marketing push, antidepressant use climbed dramatically, and they are now prescribed to one in six of the adult population in England, for example.. Continued here

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Babble hypothesis shows key factor to becoming a leader If you want to become a leader, start yammering. It doesn’t even necessarily matter what you say. New research shows that groups without a leader can find one if somebody starts talking a lot. Continued here

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How to Deliver Bad News to Your Boss It can be daunting to bring a problem to your manager, especially when you’re just starting out. But these conversations are an inevitable part of every job. Learning to have a productive conversation during a crisis requires intention and patience. Use this four-step framework to prepare yourself: Continued here

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What a Body Built to Last 100 Years Would Look Like We would look a lot different if evolution had designed the human body to work well for a century or more Continued here

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An essential guide to working with all the Myers-Briggs personality types The shift to remote work has given many of us a new perspective on how we do our jobs. Without the context of a shared workspace or the rhythm of a typical office day, our own personalities are having far more of a say in our performance.It follows, then, that the best way to maximize our output in a WFH environment is to better know our own personalities - and those of our dispersed colleagues.An efficient (and intriguing) way to manage this personality wrangling is via the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). The MBTI is widely applied within the business world, with 89 of the Fortune 100 companies utilizing it. Continued here

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The US military wants to understand the most important software on Earth Open-source code runs on every computer on the planet—and keeps America’s critical infrastructure going. DARPA is worried about how well it can be trusted.It's not much of an exaggeration to say that the whole world is built on top of the Linux kernel - although most people have never heard of it.It is one of the very first programs that load when most computers power up. It enables the hardware running the machine to interact with the software, governs its use of resources, and acts as the foundation of the operating system.It is the core building block of nearly all cloud computing, virtually every supercomputer, the entire internet of things, billions of smartphones, and more.But the kernel is also open source, meaning anyone can write, read, and use its code. And that's got cybersecurity experts inside the US military seriously worried. Its open-source nature means the Linux kernel - along with a host of other pieces of critical open-source software - is exposed to hostile manipulation in ways that we still barely understand. Continued here

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Keeping fit: how to do the right exercise for your age As we age, our bodies need different types of exercise. Here is a guide to doing the right exercise for your age. Continued here

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Is "manifesting" dangerous magical thinking or a formula for success? Diana Celestine was let in on the secret about 10 years ago. Then an IT consultant in Charlotte, North Carolina, she'd made a passing comment to a friend lamenting the state of her love life - something along the lines of "I'll probably never get married."Celestine had just been joking around. But her friend stopped her, deadly serious."If you speak it into the world, it brings it in," she said."It was the first time I'd ever thought that your words and thoughts might make any difference," Celestine tells me now over Zoom.At the time, The Secret had just swept the globe. The 2006 book by the Australian television producer Rhonda Byrne popularized the pseudo-scientific "law of attraction" as self-help. It claimed that it was possible to change your life through the power of thought alone, and that success was as simple as "ask, believe, receive". Continued here

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How to Manage Your Perfectionism Perfectionism is a double-edged sword. On one hand, it can motivate you to perform at a high level and deliver top-quality work. On the other, it can cause you unnecessary anxiety and sometimes annoy your colleagues. How can you harness the positives of your perfectionism while mitigating the negatives? Start by recognizing the opportunity cost of your behavior. Sure, you can spend an additional five hours making that PowerPoint presentation perfect, but is that a productive use of your time? Will it make a material difference to your boss or client? Focus on maximizing the impact of your effort so you can concentrate on what’s important. Similarly, learn to calibrate your standards. Of course, as a perfectionist you’re never going to aim for merely adequate — nor should you. But the next time you find yourself nitpicking niggling details, ask a trusted colleague for feedback. You may discover that your first draft is already good enough. Continued here

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Can 10 Minutes of Meditation Make You More Creative? Whether you are trying to reconcile conflicting stakeholder priorities, finding a solution to a customer’s issue, or launching a new product line, your solution probably won’t come out of a textbook. But it’s hard to keep having great ideas day after day. What do you do when you run out of good ideas? How do you “get your mojo back”? One increasingly popular solution is mindfulness meditation. Google, Goldman Sachs, and Medtronic are among the many leading firms that have introduced meditation and other mindfulness practices to their employees. Executives at these and other companies say meditation is not only useful as a stress-reduction tool but can also enhance creativity, opening doors where once there seemed to be only a wall. To gain a deeper understanding of the effectiveness of short meditation sessions in boosting creativity, the authors looked first at the literature and then conducted their own experiments. They found that mindfulness mediation works to enhance creativity and innovation, and 10 to 12 minutes of it are enough to boost creativity. Continued here

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How Istanbul Became the Global Capital of the Hair Transplant I’m lying on a table in Istanbul and a doctor I’ve never met is about to cut 4,250 holes in my head. He might be a doctor. I think he’s a doctor? The procedure will take six hours. I have no friends or family within 5,000 miles. Continued here

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How to Build Expertise in a New Field Your goal, of course, is to become a swift and wise decision-maker in this new arena, able to diagnose problems and assess opportunities in multiple contexts. You want what I call “deep smarts” — business-critical, experience-based knowledge. Typically, these smarts take years to develop; they’re hard-earned. But that doesn’t mean that it’s too late for you to move into a different field. The following steps can accelerate your acquisition of such expertise. Continued here

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CFOs and CHROs Identify Top Factors in Building Sustainable Growth Despite the ongoing pandemic, labor shortages, and supply chain delays, a majority of midmarket companies enjoyed a rebound in 2021, according to AchieveNEXT’s global survey of CFOs and CHROs. Continued here

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What Makes Innovation Partnerships Succeed Increasingly, companies today are aggressively pursuing breakthrough innovations. But to succeed in a significant, cost-efficient, and timely way they need to partner with other companies who have their own special interests and concerns, which turns out to be very hard. Partnerships are especially important in the tech sector, which moves fast with innovation as its fuel. In this article, the authors report on the efforts that Meta has made in establishing successful innovation partnerships with other companies, and they share guidance for leaders who wish to do the same. Continued here

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5 Principles for More Excellence With Less Angst - The Growth Equation As an executive coach, I saw a troubling trend among my clients even before Covid-19: Many were exhausted and on a path to burnout, if they weren't already there.The chief physician of a large healthcare system came to me because he wanted to "feel more stable and have more control over how he spent his time and energy." Even though his obsession with work and his digital devices was draining him, he told me he couldn.t go more than a few hours without opening his email.An entrepreneur who had just secured funding for her next venture was surprised to find that, after a day or two of excitement and joy over her success, she felt empty. She was concerned that "if this accomplishment isn't enough to provide some lasting fulfillment, I don't know what will be."Clients constantly talked about how much they wanted to turn it all off.the breaking news and busyness and email and social media notifications. They didn't want to be thinking constantly about what was next. Yet when they did turn it all off, they felt unsettled and restless, fluctuating between aimlessness and angst.They weren't alone. Continued here

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Does Your Company’s Culture Reinforce Its Strategy and Purpose? Good strategy has traditionally been seen as the key to business success. More recently, purpose has become an essential element of doing business. But something else is missing: culture, or the essential elements of how an organization and its employees behave, as well as its governing beliefs and principles. And yet, culture often receives less attention than purpose and strategy. The author thinks of purpose, strategy, and culture as a triangle: Each angle connects with and shapes the other two, and if one changes, the other two must evolve and adjust to maintain balance and shape, or the triangle breaks and falls apart. He presents three types of levers companies can use to profoundly shape an effective culture and allow their strategy to come to fruition. Continued here

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How I Eat Healthy on the Road While convenience stores were once devoid of good-for-you food and stocked only with nachos and roller-heated hot dogs, the selection of healthier fare has significantly improved over the years. Continued here

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How to teach your brain to reframe negative thoughts But the problem with this general framing is that there are many kinds of negative thoughts. While many of them can cause problems, the best way to fix them depends on exactly what kinds of negative thoughts you’re having. Continued here

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How to Lose Your Best Employees It can be tempting to keep your top performers doing exactly what they’re doing for as long as possible. After all, you know that that’s what they’re good at. Unfortunately, keeping these employees stagnant is a recipe for losing the very people you’re most interested in retaining. To make sure their star employees feel engaged, the author argues that managers must provide constant opportunities for growth and professional development. While this can be challenging, the best bosses are those that figure out how to keep their employees constantly learning — finding them new assignments, new challenges, even new roles elsewhere in the company — in order to keep them engaged. Continued here

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Why the Most Productive People Don’t Always Make the Best Managers Not every top performer makes for a good manager. In this piece, the authors argue that the difference between a good individual contributor and a good manager hinges on six key abilities: being open to feedback and personal change, supporting others’ development, being open to innovation, communicating well, having good interpersonal skills, and supporting organizational changes. The problem for most organizations is that they hope their new managers will develop these skills after being promoted, but that’s exactly when overwhelmed new managers tend to fall back on their individual contributor skill sets. Instead, the authors suggest that organizations should start developing these skills in all of their employees early on — after all, they’re useful for individual contributors, too. Continued here

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Up at 3:45 a.m., in Bed by 8:45 p.m.: How Apple's CEO Tim Cook Uses Energy Rituals to Optimize His Life Time management: a hallmark interview question. A skill whose importance has been drilled into us by parents, teachers, and bosses. A seeming non-negotiable for a career (and life) well-lived. But what if we got it all wrong?The issue is we focus too much on time management and not enough on energy management. The former relies on frequent, ad hoc planning of an irregular, finite resource (time). The latter relies on rituals. Continued here

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Create a Growth Culture, Not a Performance-Obsessed One Many C-Suite leaders are focused on how to build higher performance cultures. The irony, we’ve found, is that building a culture focused on performance may not be the best, healthiest, or most sustainable way to fuel results. Instead, it may be more effective to focus on creating a culture of growth. Building a growth culture requires a blend of individual and organizational components: an environment that feels safe, a focus on continuous learning, time-limited experiments, and continuous feedback. Continued here

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On your back? Side? Face-down? Mice show how we sleep may trigger or protect our brain from diseases like ALS Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, is the most common form of motor neuron disease. People with ALS progressively lose the ability to initiate and control muscle movements, including the ability to speak, swallow and breathe.There is no known cure. But recently, we studied mice and identified a new target in the fight against this devastating disease: the brain's waste clearance system.Neurodegenerative diseases . including Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's and multiple sclerosis . share many similarities, even though their clinical symptoms and disease progression may look very different. The incidence of these diseases increase with age. They are progressive and relentless, and result in gradual loss of brain tissue. We also see waste proteins accumulate in the brain.Our new research looked at how the glymphatic system, which removes waste from the brain, could prevent ALS. Continued here

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How to Talk to Your Boss When You’re Underperforming It’s normal to underperform on occasion. After all, everyone has a bad quarter — or even a bad year — from time to time. But don’t just sit back and wait for that painful performance review. Be proactive in talking with your manager about missing your goals. In situations like these, the two best ways to preserve your professional reputation is to first, come clean about your underperformance before your boss has a chance to discover it another way, and second, to focus on solutions, not excuses. So, schedule a conversation with your manager in which you take full responsibility for your mistakes. Express contrition and remorse. A sincere “I’m sorry,” goes a long way. Then, explain how you plan to do better. Focus on correction, not blaming, shaming, or faultfinding. As you offer your ideas and suggestions, ask your boss for advice and guidance. Continued here

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Why Medium failed Few tech CEOs can claim to have steered the course of online conversation more than Ev Williams. In 1999 he co-founded Blogger, which helped to take blogging mainstream with a well designed, free tool that sold to Google four years later. In 2006 Williams and his co-founder followed with Twitter, which remains one of the most influential social networks in the world. Continued here

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How to See Things From Your Kid's Point of View Children can experience a range of emotions, from sadness and anxiety to stress, anger, frustration, and fear. Learn how to help them cope by stepping into their shoes. Continued here

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The workout that beats HIIT for better heart health, according to a new study (CNN)If you're looking for a cardiovascular activity that will get your heart pumping and improve daily life, running or interval training may immediately come to mind. To maximize your workout, however, you may want to give Nordic walking a try, new research suggests. Continued here

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The Right Way to Process Feedback We all receive feedback from time to time. But are we able to process it and make the most of it? Not always. Processing feedback goes far beyond listening to it in the moment and implementing it; it involves continuous reflection, conversation, and practice. While much of this happens because of the way we receive feedback, there is much we can do, too, to make sure we’re processing feedback the right way. Continued here

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The $500m smiley face business Nearly 50 years ago, one man ‘invented’ the modern smiley face. Then, another man halfway across the world made it into a multimillion-dollar cash cow. Continued here

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We Asked GPT-3 to Write an Academic Paper about Itself—Then We Tried to Get It Published An artificially intelligent first author presents many ethical questions—and could upend the publishing process Continued here

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It’s Time to Reimagine Employee Retention According to Gartner, the pace of employee turnover is forecast to be 50–75% higher than companies have experienced previously, and the issue is compounded by it taking 18% longer to fill roles than pre-pandemic. Increasingly squeezed managers are spending time they don’t have searching for new recruits in an expensive and competitive market. Unless efforts are refocused on retention, managers will be unable to drive performance and affect change. Leaders need to take action to enable their managers to keep their talent while still being able to deliver on results. Managers need help with three things. First, they need help shifting the focus of career conversations from promotion to progression and developing in different directions. Second, they need help creating a culture and structure that supports career experiments. Finally, managers need to be rewarded not for retaining people on their teams but retaining people (and their potential) across the entire organization. Continued here

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How To Be Successful I've observed thousands of founders and thought a lot about what it takes to make a huge amount of money or to create something important. Usually, people start off wanting the former and end up wanting the latter.Here are 13 thoughts about how to achieve such outlier success. Everything here is easier to do once you've already reached a baseline degree of success (through privilege or effort) and want to put in the work to turn that into outlier success. [1] But much of it applies to anyone. Continued here

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You’re More Resilient Than You Give Yourself Credit For In my role as a professor at the Brandeis International Business School, I teach a course each fall about acting outside your comfort zone. Each student in the class chooses a behavior outside their comfort zone to work on. For some, it’s public speaking; for others, it’s networking, making small talk with strangers, or being assertive. Students have to go to actual networking events or give speeches in front of real audiences. After the fact, they compile a diary about their experiences, and we discuss and debrief as a class. Continued here

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The Psychology Behind Meeting Overload Bad meetings are the bane of the corporate world — and yet despite what appears to be an overwhelming consensus that they’re often unnecessary and unproductive, many workplaces continue to struggle to avoid them. In this piece, the authors discuss the psychological pitfalls that lead us to schedule and attend too many meetings, and share strategies to help employees, managers, and organizations overcome those challenges. While there’s no way to completely eliminate the universal human biases that drive these tendencies, a greater awareness of the psychological factors at play can help us all work towards healthier communication norms, more-effective interactions, and cleaner calendars. Continued here

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How your diet can treat diseases One of the oldest medical texts in the world is the Ebers Papyrus, a 110-page-long compilation of treatments and cures written in around 1500 BC. The text, found between the legs of a mummified body in an Egyptian tomb, has instructions on which plants to consume to treat various diseases, giving 811 prescriptions for a wide range of disorders from mental illnesses to crocodile bites. Continued here

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How to bully-proof your kids for life What is bullying?It’s a sustained pattern of aggression by a person with more power, targeting someone with less power. The key, says Stella O’Malley, author of a ground-breaking new book, Bully-Proof Kids, is that it’s repeated behaviour. But beneath this simple definition lies a complex, multilayered situation that can be exceptionally tricky to unpack. What is the power, and where does it come from? With children, says O’Malley, it’s often that they have more social status, or have been led to believe they do. Continued here

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Four ways to stop thinking the worst will happen when you're stressed People who like to feel in control are more prone to ‘catastrophising’.Catastrophising comes from the belief that by imagining what might go wrong, we're better able to protect ourselves from harm - both physical and mental. However, this tendency is only helpful if you're able to correctly predict what will happen in a certain situation and how it will make you feel.As we imagine future events, we experience an emotional reaction to the story we are creating - and we use this response to determine how we will feel in the future. But this way of predicting the future is often wrong since we're not able to imagine everything that might happen. This can lead to us creating the wrong emotional response for future situations in our heads. Continued here

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The Leading Causes Of Death In Men Should Be A Wakeup Call To Everyone In general, being an American male is hazardous to your health. Men in the United States die an average of five years before women do. That’s coupled with the fact that the country is already an outlier when it comes to life expectancy. In other rich countries, such as Iceland, Norway, Japan, and Australia, men live on average eight years longer than they do in the U.S., even though Americans spend more on health care than people in any other country in the world. Continued here

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The Busier You Are, the More You Need Quiet Time Taking time for silence restores the nervous system, helps sustain energy, and conditions our minds to be more adaptive and responsive. For example, silence is associated with the development of new cells in the hippocampus, the key brain region associated with learning and memory. But cultivating silence isn’t just about getting respite from the distractions of office chatter or tweets.  Real sustained silence, the kind that facilitates clear and creative thinking, and quiets inner chatter as well as outer. Try going on a media fast, sitting silently for 2 minutes during the middle of your workday, or taking a long walk in the woods — with no phone. The world is getting louder, but silence is still accessible. Continued here

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How to Conduct a Great Performance Review. The purpose of performance reviews is two-fold: an accurate and actionable evaluation of performance, and then development of that person’s skills in line with job tasks. For recipients, feedback has intrinsic and extrinsic value. Across fields, research shows that people become high performers by identifying specific areas where they need to improve and then practicing those skills with performance feedback. Continued here

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This tiny defibrillator turns your neighborhood into a communal ER No one wants to imagine how they might die, but statistically, we already have a good idea. Sudden cardiac arrest is the leading cause of natural death in the U.S., and when it happens outside a hospital, nearly 90% of people don’t survive. Products called AEDs—automated defibrillators—can help in the first few minutes. But where can you find one in an emergency? Continued here

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The Maldives is building the world's first floating city The Maldives has long been the picture-perfect paradise getaway, and even more so during the pandemic. Last year saw tourism return to almost pre-pandemic levels with the arrival of 1.3 million travellers, compared to 1.7 million visitors in 2019. And now, the world's lowest-lying nation might just have a stable solution to the stark reality of rising sea levels. The Maldives Floating City has just been green-lit for construction: 5,000 housing units that are linked together and tethered to the floor of a 500-acre lagoon, designed to preserve and enhance its natural and cultural ecosystem. Continued here

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Visualizing the Coming Shift in Global Economic Power (2006-2036p) As the post-pandemic recovery chugs along, the global economy is set to see major changes in the coming decades. Most significantly, China is forecast to pass the United States to become the largest economy globally. Continued here

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Steps to Take When You’re Starting to Feel Burned Out Burnout hurts. When you burn out at work, you feel diminished, like a part of yourself has gone into hiding. Challenges that were formerly manageable feel insurmountable. It’s the opposite end of the spectrum from engagement. The engaged employee is energized, involved, and high-performing; the burned-out employee is exhausted, cynical, and overwhelmed. Continued here

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A single approach to culture transformation may not fit all Imagine a large consumer-packaged-goods (CPG) organization with lots of business units, all seeking to maximize their own profit-and-loss statements (P&Ls). To keep up with and ultimately surpass competitors, senior leaders at the center of this CPG behemoth want to make significant investments in innovation and new markets—and, in a change from current cultural practices, they want all the business units to cooperate to fuel this growth. Continued here

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Climate change: 'Sand battery' could solve green energy's big problem Finnish researchers have installed the world's first fully working "sand battery" which can store green power for months at a time.The developers say this could solve the problem of year-round supply, a major issue for green energy.Using low-grade sand, the device is charged up with heat made from cheap electricity from solar or wind.The sand stores the heat at around 500C, which can then warm homes in winter when energy is more expensive.Finland gets most of its gas from Russia, so the war in Ukraine has drawn the issue of green power into sharp focus. It has the longest Russian border in the EU and Moscow has now halted gas and electricity supplies in the wake of Finland's decision to join NATO. Continued here

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Reading to improve language skills? Focus on fiction rather than non-fiction Verbal abilities provide benefits in school and in one’s career. Fostering a love for stories and fiction in children should be a high priority.We all know that reading is good for children and for adults, and that we should all be reading more often. One of the most obvious benefits of reading is that it helps improve language skills. A major review of research on leisure reading confirmed that reading does indeed foster better verbal abilities, from preschoolers all the way to university students. But, does it matter what we read?In four separate studies, based on data from almost 1,000 young adults, behavioural scientist Marina Rain and I examined how reading fiction and non-fiction predicts verbal abilities.We found that reading fiction was the stronger and more consistent predictor of language skills compared to reading non-fiction. This was true whether people reported their own reading habits or if we used a more objective measure of lifetime reading (recognizing real author names from among false ones). Importantly, after accounting for fiction reading, reading non-fiction did not predict language skills much at all. Continued here

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Why a placebo can work—even when you know it's fake When Betty Durkin stepped onto her deck last June, she slipped on a loose board and fell on the floor. Durkin broke her neck, seriously bruised her wrists and knees, injured the top of her cervical spine, and got splinters lodged in her face. The pain was instantly unbearable. Continued here

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How to Tell If You’re Delegating Too Much — and What to Do About It If you find yourself frequently miscommunicating with your team, hearing about issues at the last minute, or misunderstanding how your team sets priorities, it may be a sign you’ve delegated too much. To get re-involved, start by taking on a symbolic project that will send a signal you’re re-engaging, and help you re-learn some of the front-line skills you need to have a deep understanding of the work your team is doing. Second, re-set expectations with your team. An off-site or planning meeting can help set a new agenda. Third, double-down on communicating your vision for your team. If people know why they’re doing what they’re doing, or the major goals they should be working toward, they shouldn’t need you to be super-involved in their day-to-day efforts. Continued here

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Climate change: Do we have to rethink what we eat? | DW | 01.07.2022 Asparagus in winter, pears from Argentina, Peruvian blueberries and Californian almonds — these are just a few of the several thousand products shoppers can buy when they enter a supermarket. It's something our ancestors a century ago likely never imagined, but we've become used to this bounty of choice when we select our food."It is truly peculiar to walk into a Carrefour Marche in France or Wal Mart here in the United States and see what's on offer," says Janet Chrzan, a nutritional anthropologist from the University of Pennsylvania. "We are living in a food environment which is unlike anything our species has ever encountered."German supermarkets on the whole have more than 10,000 products. In the US, the average is more than 30,000, according to the American Food Industry Association. Consumers make decisions about which items to put into their shopping baskets in a matter of seconds. And those decisions have implications for the environment. Continued here

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Neuroplasticity: Can You Think Yourself Into a Different Person? - The Best Brain Possible For years she had tried to be the perfect wife and mother but now, divorced, with two sons, having gone through another break-up and in despair about her future, she felt as if she’d failed at it all, and she was tired of it. On June 6,  2007, Debbie Hampton, of Greensboro, North Carolina, took an overdose of more than 90 pills – a combination of ten different prescription drugs, some of which she’d stolen from a neighbor’s bedside cabinet. That afternoon, she’d written a note on her computer: “I’ve screwed up this life so bad that there is no place here for me and nothing I can contribute.” Then, in tears, she went upstairs, sat on her bed, swallowed her pills with some cheap Shiraz and put on a Dido CD to listen to as she died. As she lay down, she felt triumphant. Continued here

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Why Einstein is a "peerless genius" and Hawking is an "ordinary genius" You've heard of Stephen Hawking. How about Renata Kallosh? Didn't think so. Why are some brilliant people called "geniuses," but not others? Continued here

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As the World Shifts, So Should Leaders Two decades ago, extensive research led Nohria, the former dean of Harvard Business School, to conclude that the hallmark of great leadership is the ability to adapt to the times. Today, he says, we’re in a period of significant change, thanks to global events, governmental responses, technological changes, and shifts in demographics, social mores, and labor relationships. Here he discusses those developments and the skills that CEOs will need to successfully steer through them. Continued here

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The giant hangar poised for an aviation revolution Sergey Brin turned internet search into one of the world’s most valuable businesses more than two decades ago. Now he intends to improve a technology which had its heyday long before he was born. Continued here

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Under Anesthesia, Where Do Our Minds Go? After experimenting on a hen, his dog, his goldfish, and himself, dentist William Morton was ready. On Oct. 16, 1846, he hurried to the Massachusetts General Hospital surgical theater for what would be the first successful public test of a general anesthetic.His concoction of sulfuric ether and oil from an orange (just for the fragrance) knocked a young man unconscious while a surgeon cut a tumor from his neck. To the onlooking students and clinicians, it was like a miracle. Some alchemical reaction between the ether and the man's brain allowed him to slip into a state akin to light sleep, to undergo what should have been a painful surgery with little discomfort, and then to return to himself with only a hazy memory of the experience. Continued here

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Does anyone ever really feel 'grown up' ? I asked some older people to find out For as long as I can remember, I've wanted to be a grownup. As children, my friends and I would play at being shopkeepers and customers, thrilled to inhabit an adult role. As a teenager, I lived alone abroad. By my 30s I had all the things I thought signalled adulthood: a career (as a journalist), a home, a husband, a washing machine, a dishwasher and a fridge. All the paperwork and white goods to prove I was finally the competent, confident adult I had always hoped to be. Continued here

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Nuclear Fusion Is Already Facing a Fuel Crisis In the south of France, ITER is inching towards completion. When it’s finally fully switched on in 2035, the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor will be the largest device of its kind ever built, and the flag-bearer for nuclear fusion. Continued here

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How To Discuss Your Plans for Death, Per Estate Lawyers | Well+Good Death comes along with an emotional and logistical cascade of concerns for those close to the person who passed. While working with a palliative-care professional or death doula once death becomes imminent can certainly help with the emotional side of things, creating an estate plan ahead of time mitigates stress related to the logistics. “This is why we always say every adult should have a will,” says estate-planning attorney Rosalyn Carothers, JD. “For one, that allows you to direct what happens to any of your assets, and two, you’re making it easier and less expensive for your family members to help, as you’d have seen fit.” Continued here

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Microsoft’s Code-Writing AI Points to the Future of Computers At the Microsoft Build developer conference today, the company's chief technology officer, Kevin Scott, demonstrated an AI helper for the game Minecraft. The non-player character within the game is powered by the same machine learning technology Microsoft has been testing for auto-generating software code. The feat hints at how recent advances in AI could change personal computing in years to come by replacing interfaces that you tap, type, and click to navigate into interfaces that you simply have a conversation with. Continued here

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Influencer Creep - Real Life When influencers first emerged, they were met with some skepticism from advertisers. Compared to conventional celebrities, bloggers and vloggers were often positioned as risky and unpredictable, operating in a messy and frequently scandalous online Wild West. Disciplined in part by the precarious and ever-shifting work environment created by social media platforms, influencers learned to protect themselves and their content by anticipating and responding to algorithmic changes, researching optimization strategies to gather visibility. Continued here

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Spot the difference: the invincible business of counterfeit goods I was standing in front of an imposing townhouse in the swish 16th arrondissement of Paris. Its classical lines, marble staircases and delicately wrought iron balustrades belied the fierce sense of purpose inside. The Musée de la Contrefaçon is an unusual kind of museum – it specialises in counterfeits. I hoped that my visit would help me understand a problem that luxury brands have been battling for decades: that of mass-market knock-offs and blatant counterfeits. Continued here

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Want to Remember More of What You Read? Do These 4 Things, According to a Linguistics Professor Do you want to remember more of what you read? If so, some ways of reading are better than others. That advice comes from Naomi S. Baron, professor emerita of linguistics at American University, and the author of multiple books and studies on reading and learning. In a piece for Big Think, she explains why some ways of reading, and absorbing information in general, are better than others and lead to greater retention and also greater comprehension, especially of abstract concepts. Continued here

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This creative exercise turns disorganized thoughts into gold Do you have days where you’re facing a huge stack of assignments, but you find yourself unable to get rid of all the thoughts buzzing around in your brain? It might be time to try a brain dump. Continued here

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How I Learned to Eat Alone and Not Be Lonely In the spring of 2020, as my world shrunk to the square footage of my apartment, food became a mode of injecting pleasure and delight into an otherwise bleak and lonely period of my life. I frequently ordered pizza from my favorite local spot in Washington, D.C.; I sampled different brands of instant ramen; I baked loaves of banana bread. In some ways, this routine was familiar. In high school, after my parents separated, I would cook dinner for two—my mom and me—but she worked late and I would eat alone before she got home. For much of the pandemic, though, no one came through the front door. Continued here

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What Leaders Need to Know Before Trying a 4-Day Work Week While there is no easy way to address concerns about how (and how much) we work, research tells us that no matter what we do, taking a holistic, long-term focus on the well-being of the workforce is the best path to both happiness and prosperity. Maybe the answer is a four-day workweek. Or maybe it’s something else. But we must start with an honest appraisal of how productivity and time trade-offs impact the well-being of workers. Before trying a four-day workweek, employers need to be aware of two important factors. First, a reduction in hours must also be accompanied by a revision of or even reduction in workload. Second, time at work could become even more intense and stressful for workers, even if there are productivity benefits to be had. Continued here

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Nonprogrammers are building more of the world's software – a computer scientist explains 'no-code' Developing software used to require programming skills. Today, a growing number of people are building websites, games and even AI programs without writing a line of code. Continued here