Mariana Bechtel isn’t exactly someone who avoids stress. Throughout her, she has pursued high-pressure management jobs: “I’m hard core,” says the 44-yearold wife and mother of two. “I wanted to be on top at work, and I wanted to be a great mom” –one who could attend baseball games, drive and help with homework even after an hour-long commute （通勤）on workdays, more often than not, with a5 a.m. marathon-training run.

However, after months of losing sleep, dropping weight and feeling pushed to lose her mind, Mariana Bechtel decided she had to address her stress-and turn it to her advantage. The new job she recently switched to still has its share of pressure, but with more support from her boss and more flexibility in her schedule, she says she feels great.

Contrary to popular belief, stress doesn’t have to be a soul-sucking, health-damaging force. But few people know how to transform their stress into the positive kind that helps them reach their goals.

A recent research confirms that gaining control over job demands, doing work with meaning and purpose and enjoying support and encouragement from co-workers are all linked to beneficial stress. Simply changing attitudes and expectations about stress-through coaching, training or peer-support groups-can also develop the constructive kind of stress.

“Stress is paradoxical,” says Alia Crum, a research scholar. “On one hand, it can be the thing that hurts us most. On the other, it’s fundamental to psychological and physical growth. The attitude that we view and approach stress will shift the outcome.”

Jennifer Udler was in the middle of a 50-minute session with a patient when it started to rain. Walking and talking about anxiety and stress, she and her teenage patient got wet. But when they made it back indoors, Jennifer said, “Hey, look at us! We’re wet, but we got through it! Now you can use that next time you have anxiety before and during an event.” This kind of insight is key to her practice.

Jennifer, a social worker whose practice focuses on adolescents, has been a therapist(治疗师)for 20 years. For most of that time, she practiced in a traditional office, but she noticed how easy it was for her running partners to open up about their problems. After doing some research, in 2013, Jennifer founded Positive Strides Therapy, where she conducts sessions while walking outdoors. She conducts all of her sessions outdoors and in all kinds of weather.

“When somebody asks me if I specialize in walking therapy, I say, ‘No, that’s how I practice,’” Udler said. “I specialize in family systems theory. Walking in the park is just where I practice.”

Despite the lack of formal research, Jennifer believes strongly in the benefits, saying that it can be helpful. “We’ll be talking about ‘moving forward’ as we are actually moving forward on the path, building muscle memory of how they can move forward and leave the anxiety behind.”

And outdoor walking therapy doesn’t just benefit teens. Jennifer says the adults in her practice welcome the humanizing effect of taking therapy outdoors.

Mice are at their best at night. But a new analysis suggests researchers often test the nightly creatures during the day — which could alter results and create variability across studies—if they record time-of-day information at all.

Of the 200 papers examined in the new study, more than half either failed to report the timing of behavioral testing or did so ambiguously. Only 20 percent reported nighttime testing. The analysis was published in Neuroscience &. Biobehavioral Reviews.

West Virginia University neuroscientist Randy Nelson, the study’s lead author, says this is likely a matter of human convenience. “It is easier to get students and techs to work during the day than at night,” Nelson says. But that convenience comes at a cost.

“Time of day not only impacts the intensity of many variables, including locomotor (运动) activity, aggressive behavior, and plasma hormone levels, but changes in those variables can only be observed during certain parts of the daytime,” says University of Wyoming behavioral neuroscientist William D. Todd. This means that “failing to report time of day of data collection and tests makes interpretation of results extremely difficult,” adds Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center staff scientist Natalia Machado. Neither Todd nor Machado was involved in the new study.

The study researchers say it is critical that scientists report the timing of their work and consider the fact that animals’ behavioral and physiological responses can vary with the hour. As a first step, Nelson says, “Taking care of time-of-day considerations seems like low-hanging fruit in terms of increasing behavioral neuroscience research reliability.”

University of Calgary psychologist Michael Antle, who was also not involved in the analysis, says such differences in how studies are run contribute to a “replication (复制) crisis” in science, with other laboratories unable to recreate study results. “Running a study at the wrong time,” he says, “could lead to us completely missing a finding altogether.”