Millions of Americans began 2014 with the same resolution as they started 2013 with a goal of losing weight. However setting weight loss as a goal is a mistake.

To reach our goal of losing weight — the output, we need to control what we eat — the input. That is we tend to care about the output but not to control the input. This is a bad way to construct goals. The alternative is to focus your resolution on the input. Instead of resolving to lose weight, try an actionable resolution: “I’ll stop having desert for lunch” or “I’ll walk every day for 20 minutes.” Creating a goal that focuses on a well-specified input will likely be more effective than concentrating on the outcome.

Recently a new science behind incentives (激励) including in education has been discussed. For example researcher Roland Fryer wanted to see what works best in motivating children to do better in school. In some cases he gave students incentives based on input like reading certain books while in others the incentives were based on output like results on exams. His main finding was that incentives increased achievement when based on input but had no effect on output. Fryer’s conclusion was that the intensives for inputs might be more effective because students do not know how to do better on exam aside from general rules like “study harder.” Reading certain books on the other hand is a well-set task over which they have much more control.

As long as you have direct control over your goal you have a much higher chance of success. And it’s easier to start again if you fail because you know exactly what you need to do.

If you want to cut down on your spending, a good goal would be making morning coffee at home instead of going to a cafe for example. This is a well-specified action-based goal for which you can measure your success easily. Spending less money isn’t a goal because it’s too general. Similarly if you want to spend more time with your family don’t stop with this general wish. Think bout an actionable habit that you could adopt and stick to like a family movie night every Wednesday. In the long run these new goals could become a habit.

While how attractive you are to mosquitoes (蚊子) depends on plenty of factors, new research has found the colors you’re wearing definitely play a role.

That’s the main conclusion from a new study published in the journal Nature Communications. For the study, researchers from the University of Washington tracked the behavior of female mosquitoes when they were given different types of visual and scent cues (气味信号). The researchers put the mosquitoes into small test rooms and exposed them to different things, like a colored dot or person’s hand.

“Mosquitoes first find that you re around by smelling carbon dioxide from your breath. That causes them to look for certain colors and visual patterns that could indicate food,” the researchers explained.

When there was no scent like carbon dioxide in the test rooms, the mosquitoes pretty much ignored the colored dot, no matter what color it was. But once researchers sprayed carbon dioxide in the room, they flew toward dots that were red, orange, black, or cyan. Dots that were green, blue, or purple were ignored.

“Light colors are regarded as a threat to mosquitoes, which is why many species usually avoid biting in direct sunlight,” researcher Timothy Best says. “Mosquitoes are more likely to die from dehydration (脱水). Therefore, light colors may represent danger and avoidance. In contrast, darker colors may represent shadows, which are more likely to absorb and keep heat, allowing mosquitoes to use their complicated antenna (触角) to locate a host.

If you have the option of wearing lighter or darker clothes when you know you’ll be going into an area with lots of mosquitoes, you’d better go with the lighter choice. “Dark colors stand out to mosquitoes,” he says.