Pleasingly, a new study supports one of my favourite insights about writing, or getting any creative work done-though I’m pretty sure that wasn’t intentional, since the researchers were actually studying traffic jams. Jonathan Boreyko, an American engineering professor, was crawling along in his car one day, observing how drivers naturally bunch up at red lights, leaving mere inches between vehicles. Their motivation isn’t a mystery: the closer you are to the car ahead, you’d assume, the better your chances of squeezing through before the light goes back to red, and the sooner you’ll reach your destination, even if you also increase the risk of collisions.

But you’d assume wrong. When Boreyko and a colleague recreated the traffic-light scenario (场景) on a special test track, they found that drivers who bunched up made no swifter progress. True, they stopped slightly closer to the light. But it also took them longer to resume (继续) moving safely, and these two factors canceled each other out. “There’s no point in getting closer to the car in front of you when traffic comes to a stop.” Boreyko concluded.

This is true of writing or similar work. People never rest in urgent pursuit of their goals. Yes, it all looks impressively productive. But as the psychologist Robert Boice argues, racing to get a task completed generally brings a cost that outweighs the benefit. You tire yourself out, so you can’t shine the next day. Or you neglect so many other duties that you’re forced to take an extra day to catch up. Or you start damaging work you already produced — which is why the novelist Cabriel Carcfa Marqucz said he gave up writing in the afternoon: he wrote more, but he had to redo it the next morning, so the overall effect was to slow him down. That’s also why Boice insists that when you’re writing on a schedule, it’s as important to be disciplined about stopping as starting, even if you’re on a roll.

Clearly, this is all a convenient way to feel superior to people who put in more hours. But that doesn’t mean it’s untrue. Indeed, it’s scary to ask what role impatience play in your life in general: how much of each day we spend leaning into the future, trying to get tasks “out of the way”, always focused on the destination, metaphorically (隐喻地) inching closer and closer to the bumper of the car ahead. None of it gets us anywhere faster. It’s also no way to live.

A new study by a team of researchers shows that searching to evaluate the truthfulness of false news articles actually increases the probability of believing misinformation, not the opposite.

The reason for this outcome may be explained by search-engine outputs in the study. The researchers found that this phenomenon is concentrated among individuals for whom search engines return lower-quality information.

“This points to the danger that ‘data voids’ — areas of the information ecosystem that are dominated by low quality, or even outright false, news and information — may be playing a resulting role in the online search process, leading to low return of credible information or, more alarming, the appearance of non-credible information at the top of search results,” observes lead author Kevin Aslett, an assistant professor at the University of Central Florida.

To study the impact, they recruited participants through both Qualtrics and Amazon’s Mechanical Turk for a series of five experiments and with the aim of measuring the impact of a common behavior: searching online to evaluate news (SOTEN).

The first four studies tested the following aspects of online search behavior and impact:

◎ The effect of SOTEN on belief in both false or misleading and true news directly within two days an article’s publication

◎ Whether the effect of SOTEN can change an individual’s evaluation after they had already assessed the truthfulness of a news story

◎ The effect of SOTEN months after publication

◎ The effect of SOTEN on recent news about a key topic with significant news coverage

A fifth study combined a survey with web-tracking data in order to identify the effect of exposure to both low- and high-quality search-engine results on belief in misinformation.

Across the five studies, the authors found that the act of searching online to evaluate news led to a statistically significant increase in belief in misinformation. This occurred whether it was shortly after the publication of misinformation or months later. This finding suggests that the passage of time does not lessen the impact of SOTEN on increasing the likelihood of believing false news stories to be true. Moreover, the fifth study showed that this phenomenon is concentrated among individuals for whom search engines return lower-quality information.

“The findings highlight the need for media literacy programs to ground recommendations in search engines to invest in solutions to the challenges identified by this research,” concludes Joshua A Tucker, professor of politics.

Raise your hand if you've had your Smartphone stolen. According to the Federal Communication Commission（FCC.），the phone theft rate for the year 2013 is estimated to be about 369 per 100，000 individuals﹣with a higher rate in cities. The solution to that problem starts at home﹣with you. While 36 percent of Smartphone owners secure their phonic with a four﹣digit code，just 11 percent used a code longer than four digits，a password，or an unlock pattern；fully a thrice of those surveyed took none forth listed security measures at all.

Improved security can definitely helpdeterthefts. In cases where users set no password，it's quite easy to erase a phone and turn it around on the black market. While simple four﹣digit pass codes can help slow that process down，they are mathematically much cashier to crack（破解）than longer，more complicated passwords.

Technological measures have agreeably begun in the making process：Apple，lord example，introduced a feature which prevents someone from disabling the Find My aphonic service，erasing the device，or react. inviting an erased device. In the six months after that upstate，thefts of phones decreased by around a quarter in New York，San Francisco and London. Were everybody to set a strafing password on their devices﹣or work device makers to re. curie. Lasers to set a pass code，rather than merely suggesting it. it would be considerably harder tore thieves to resell those phonics elsewhere. Though. much as with cars，it wouldn't necessarily stop insolents where smart phones are taken apart.

The FCC，is asking that device makers better educate consumers about the anti﹣theft measures available on their devices. Really，it's a matter of common sense：just as you wouldn't leave your house unlocked﹣especially if you lived in an urban area﹣you shouldn't walk around with an unprotected phone. Because these days. the amulet oversensitive and personal information you keep in your phone may actually be more valuable than what you leave in your house. So，for your own sake，fire up that Smartphone and set a secure pass code，and do it right now.