“It's possible to jump to happy endings a little too quickly,” says Laura King, PhD, a psychology professor at the University of Missouri, Columbia. In her research with people who have experienced major life challenges, King has found that people whose stories gloss over（掩盖）conflict tend to become happier over the course of two years.

“The ability to take some time and experience grief（悲伤）or unhappiness improves your ability to appreciate the world in all its richness and complexity,” King says.

In one study, King asked parents to tell the story of discovering that their child had Down syndrome. Immediately after telling their stories and again two years later, the parents completed measures of subjective well-being. Researchers blind to the participants' test scores read their stories and recorded the presence of foreshadowing（预示）and whether the stories had happy or sad beginnings and endings. The researchers also scored how vividly the stories illustrated conflict, struggle and exploration.

Two years later, the parents who had grown happier were the ones who had written stories with happy endings. “I knew everything would be all right,” one woman wrote. Another parent wrote, “I know my daughter is quite special. She's the closest I've come to an angel on Earth.”

However, only the parents who first vividly described their mixed feelings upon learning of their child's diagnosis grew happier. “I cried a lot,” wrote a parent. “The pain was so deep. I felt cheated. I could hardly function.” These were also the parents who later seemed best able to fully appreciate their children's gifts and limitations.

Doge, Grumpy Cat, Pepe the Frog…these memes (表情包) are often used in our chats with friends on the Internet. But now they have also found their way into the world of fashion.

According to a global fashion search engine Lyst, memecore (梗式穿搭) will become one of the biggest fashion hits this year. Following this trend, some brands have pushed memes to their “extremes” to get people excited. For example, UK fashion brand JW Anderson has used goldfish tanks and pixels (像素) as part of its design. Spanish fashion brand Loewe has brought out boots in the shape of bags.

This meme-inspired fashion trend is “a rejection of the idea that clothing has to obey rules defining what’s ‘in’ and ‘out’,” as the fashion website CR Fashion Book notes. The only rule is to “wear what you want, even if it seems odd to those who aren’t in on the joke.”

This attitude of fashion freedom has struck a chord with many young people. According to Refinery29, a creative global platform for young people, as aesthetics (审美) change rapidly, people often ask what their aesthetic is because they want something to define themselves. Growing up on the Internet, surrounded by nontraditional memes and comment sections, young people want to challenge the usual systems of taste.

Meanwhile, in an era filled with stress and competition, people are left craving for jokes and irony. Now the memecore fashion trend can provide a supply to meet this demand.

Some people might say that the rise of memecore fashion is “a form of escapism”, an idea put forward by CR Fashion Book. But in a stressful life, why not wear some memecore clothes and bring more joy to both yourself and others?

The change caused by increased scientific funding during the 20th century is remarkable. Thomas Edison electrified the world from his industrial lab at Menlo Park, and the Carnegie Foundation was the major supporter of Edwin Hubble. Advances in science during the Second World War—from the development of radar to the atom bomb — encouraged governments and companies to increase their funding.

However, a growing amount of work shows that the reward has fallen even as more money is spent on research. One explanation for this is that the way science is funded is out of date. The rate at which funding applications are approved has fallen. Two-fifths of a top scientist’s time is spent on things other than research, such as looking for money. Risky ideas are often put aside. It is time to make another change.

The first step is to try new things. More money could fund promising people rather than specific projects, encouraging researchers to take risks. Countries should also learn from the best practices of others. American funders give over three times more to science than the European funders do. Europeans might benefit from learning from others’ practices.

More important still is to find ways to measure what is working and what is not, and then adapt accordingly. Governments might consider appointing leading scientists or chief economists to do the data analysis in various scientific fields. One interesting idea is to keep a close eye on the projects that they do not fund, and track how they perform.

None of this will be easy. Scientific funders say they want to experiment, but they also face pressure to support research that can be easily explained, to keep politicians happy. In some cases more money may be the only solution. Still, the economic returns to research are so large — at least ten times the original investment — that fixing the system is well worth the effort. Like science itself, the way of funding it must also progress.