For you who dream of studying abroad, you’re probably thinking it’ll be an easy transition. From my personal experience, I can tell you that it is much fun, but certainly not easy. In fact, there are many challenges of studying abroad. 【小题1】

You may feel like an outsider. Regardless of what country you’re going to, you may find yourself wondering why everyone’s laughing when you don’t realize someone has told a joke. 【小题2】 Actually everyone I’ve ever met while studying abroad has been very friendly. Though I may never become truly “one of them”, finally this problem becomes smaller and smaller.

You have to overcome the language barrier. Even if you’re studying in a country where you speak the same language, there’re still strong local accents and slang phrases (俚语) to clear. 【小题3】 However, the language barrier problem also goes away pretty quickly.

【小题4】 When something seems to go against you in a foreign country, you can really feel on your own. Your family and friends will be hundreds or even thousands of miles away. This challenge is likely to be felt most especially true in the first few months. But then, you’ll make new friends and after a year or so, everything will be OK!

There’re cultural misunderstandings for you to deal with. As a foreigner, you don’t know the local culture. 【小题5】 Don’t worry; you can avoid cultural misunderstandings by observing what others do and how they do it. If there’s any doubt, just ask! You’ll find most people are happy to talk about their customs.

In China, most sleep or bedtime procrastinators (拖延者) are workers on the soul-sapping and horribly common 9-9-6 schedule (9am-9pm, six days a week) who, despite being exhausted, use their late-night, post-work hours to claw back some sense of self, even when they know they should be sleeping.

My situation — two small children plus full-time job — is embarrassingly far from their experience, and yet many of us in the west find ourselves doing the same things. The revenge bit — which might be better translated as “retaliatory” — is that we are avenging ourselves against our busy lives, either by staying up too late or by not going to sleep once in bed, often because we’re on our screens.

Dr. Lindsay Browning, sleep specialist and author of a new book, Navigating Sleeplessness, agrees “I am seeing many more clients who describe staying up later because they need alone time.” In China, it’s young people working brutal hours, but in Europe, studies suggest it’s also parents and students. But sleep procrastination can affect anyone who struggles with stress, extended working hours or inadequate downtime, which, in pandemic times, puts many more of us at risk.

Earlier this year, Caroline Newte Hardie set up Peace+Riot, a family-friendly cafe-bar in south London, specifically to give knackered parents more support. But long hours working on a new business have exacerbated her revenge procrastination habit. “If I finish working at midnight, I need an hour, as I’m wired, even though I’m tired. Before I had kids I never needed time to myself, but now I need at least an hour to catch my breath, especially if I’ve spent the day in problem-solving mode. If I went straight to bed, my life would be just work-childcare-work-childcare.”

One downside is that sleep vacancy has been shown to make us more likely to procrastinate the next day. “But lack of sleep increases impulsivity, which increases your likelihood of sleep procrastination. It’s almost a self-fulfilling prophecy that the less sleep that we get, the more impulsive we become and the more vulnerable we are to sleep procrastination.” “The consequences of sleep deprivation are endless,” says Dr. Chris Winter, neurologist, sleep specialist and author of The Rested Child and The Sleep Solution. “Cognitive decline, cardiovascular disease, stroke, obesity, diabetes, and numerous short-term performance issues — mood, concentration, memory, attention, decision-making — are all affected.” As Walker puts it: “The shorter your sleep, the shorter your lifespan.”

Male scientists portray their studies as “unprecedented, remarkable, excellent and novel” more often than female scientists, a new study finds, which may contribute to gender differences in pay and promotion in the medical world.

The study, published Monday in the British Medical Journal, analyzed more than 6.2 million articles published in journals between 2002 and 2017.

The researchers found that studies in prestigious journals with a male first or last author (or both) were 12% more likely to use sweeping, positive terms — “unique”, “robust”, “prominent”— than those where women were credited, which they believe contributed to the male studies getting about 10% more citations. The first author is the researcher who took the lead on the paper, the last generally is the most senior author.

Citations are often used in hiring and promotion decisions.

The effect was most pronounced in a subset of 60,000 of the most prestigious medical journals, which include those with the largest readership and that are cited by scientists most often.

For these journals, men were 21% more likely to use stronger, more positive language than women, which the researchers think played a role in 13% more citations.

“There is a benefit to promote yourself by using these terms,” says Anupam B. Jena, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and senior author on the study.

Experts say the study helps shed light on why women make up only 25% of medical professors.

Marc Lerchenmueller, an assistant professor of technological innovation and management science at the University of Mannheim in Germany and first author of the study, says the use of superlatives by men was driven by the higher impact journals.

Other research has found similar findings. Julian Kolev, an assistant professor at SMU Cox School of Business in Dallas, says the Gates Foundation let his team examine the foundation ’ s grant-review process of about 5,000 applicants for health research projects between 2008 and 2017. Researchers wanted to see why men are ranked favorably more often than women, even though the reviewers don’t see identifying information for the applicant. Men were about 12% to 16% more likely to receive a higher score from a reviewer and 10% to 13% more likely to get a grant.

“What we found was the biggest cause of distinction between male and female applicants was the language that they used to describe their ideas,” Dr. Kolev says. “Men tended to use broad language — language that covers multiple topics and papers across different areas. Women tended to use topic-specific words, much narrower language.”

The researchers looking at the Gates data also examined whether the broader language helped oversell an idea or was actual substantive. They found that it was mostly a case of overselling.

“The proposals with broad language actually under-performed relative to narrow language proposals, based on publications, ability to attract follow-up funding and attract new collaborations,” Dr. Kolev says.

Vineet Arora, a professor of medicine at University of Chicago Medicine, has done research showing that female physicians are penalized for demonstrating so-called male traits starting as early as their training.

The result: When women try to get an article published in a high-profile journal they may be more conservative in stating their findings.

One explanation for the study’s findings, Dr. Arora says, is that men and women write differently. Another potential explanation is that men who use more positive words are treated differently in the peer review and editorial process than women who do so. “My hunch (直觉) is that it’s a two-way street,” she says. “That women are less likely to use those words, and when they do, they’ re probably more harshly criticized.”

Given that only 25% of medical professors are female, Dr. Arora says, answering questions about what contributes to such distinction is essential. “How do we ensure equitable reviews across gender so that we do not see these findings?” she says.