It should be easy for you to recognize faces of your family and friends. But can you remember faces that you’ve only seen once? You might think it is very difficult.

【小题1】. They are the so-called “super recognizers”, who can remember at least 80 percent of the faces they’ve seen.

【小题2】. But studies shows that at least one person in every 50 is a super recognizer, reported the Daily Mail.

Bournemouth University in the UK recently carried out research trying to find whether super recognizers have a different way to process faces. They have found that when these people look at faces, they spend more time looking at the person’s nose. 【小题3】. Their super ability is limited to only to recognizing faces.

Another important finding is that there are subtypes（子类型）of super recognition. Some super recognizers never forget faces. But for some, if you present a pair of faces to them at the same time, they can quickly decide whether the faces are of the same person or two different people.

These subtypes of super recognition could be applied to many areas of life. 【小题4】. Super recognizers could help match faces in CCTV footage（闭路电视镜头）. They could also help police spot bad guys or even missing people in crowds.

As Eileen Smith walked to the podium to deliver a speech recently, her heart pounded. She was addressing players, coaches and parents at her son’s lacrosse team banquet and felt emotional.

Ms. Smith tried taking deep breaths to calm herself. It didn’t work. So she began singing, in her head: “Gonna fly now. Flying high now. Gonna fly, FLY…”

“I played my ‘Rocky’ song in my head to build my confidence,” says Ms. Smith, 52 years old, a diplomat-turned-speaking-coach.

Ms. Smith has been singing the song for decades at times when she needs an extra boost of courage or energy. The science supports her habit. Listening to a beloved song can help us manage our emotions and focus on the task at hand. It can also help us access what psychologists call our autobiographical memory, or personal history.

“It reminds us who we are and helps us stay focused on who we want to be,” says Daniel Levitin, a cognitive neuroscientist, who studies how music affects the brain.

Music can inspire us and spur creativity. If its beat is faster than our heartbeat, it can fire us up and make a difficult task feel easier, says Dr. Levitin, who was a session musician, sound engineer and record producer before becoming a scientist, working with artists such as Stevie Wonder and Blue Öyster Cult. A more sedate tempo can help slow our heart and respiration rate down.

When we listen to music we love, we experience pleasure in the form of a dopamine release in our brain. And over time, our brain learns to recognize music we enjoy faster and releases the dopamine earlier, says Susan Rogers, a cognitive neuroscientist who studies music and the brain and who, in a previous career as a music engineer, worked with Prince. We get that feel-good rush just anticipating a favorite song.

One of the most powerful things music can do is to give our brain a rest. Listening to music we enjoy is one of the easiest and most reliable ways to activate our “default mode network,” or daydreaming mode— what the brain does when it’s not working or concentrating, says Dr. Levitin. This restorative state is essential to our well-being.

It’s hard to move into it when we’re overworked or over stressed. Music — especially a go-to song — can help.

We have a family tradition where each year, on New Year’s Eve, we sit down and go through old albums. This year, when we were doing this annual routine, I noticed my grandmother looked shorter now than in pictures from when she was younger.

Our height decreases with age. The height that most of us boosts during our teens and twenties suddenly decides to leave us behind as we get increasingly older. So we see our parents and grandparents “shrinking”.

This loss in height is observed in both males and females and across continents. Aging is universal; so too is our gradual reduction in height. People typically begin losing their height around the age of 30 years. Every ten years after this age, humans lose almost one centimeter, which roughly translates to about one half of an inch. This decrease in height also accelerates with age. Men and women lose height differently. Women lose more inches compared to males of the same age. Also, interestingly enough, the rate of height loss depends on their initial height, with the taller ones losing more height.

The length of leg bones and the spine determine the height of a person. These normally attain their maximum length by the end of adolescence, after which one’s height does not increase. During our “adult phase”, the length of the leg bones remains pretty much the same, but the spinal bones tend to play a key role in the reduction of height. Besides, the ligaments of the foot start degenerating with age. This arches our foot down. Thus, our height may reduce slightly. In addition, the body loses its lean mass muscle with age due to, in part, loss of muscle tissues. This condition is age-related loss of muscle. The muscle fibers shrink and are replaced at a slower rate. This muscle loss makes us look shorter.

Nothing can really push the stop button, but it can lose some speed through appropriate diet, regular exercise, and general avoidance of alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine.