Our home galaxy(星系), the Milky Way, makes for a pretty space picture, and it looks normal at a distance. But a new 3D map reveals a surprise:_______________________________.

The Milky Way is a spiral(漩涡型的) galaxy, in which stars and gas clouds exist mainly in its spiral “arms”. Our massive neighbor, the Andromeda galaxy(仙女座), is also spiral. Spiral galaxies usually appear very flat and easy to see through a telescope, said the researchers.

Using 1,339 large, pulsating(脉冲的) stars to make a 3D map of the Milky Way, researchers discovered instead that the galaxy’s disk of stars is increasingly twisting，most likely due to the spinning of the disk. And the farther the stars are from the center, the more twisted it becomes.

Previously, astronomers saw evidence of hydrogen clouds becoming warped(弯曲的) in the Milky Way. This isn’t completely abnormal, because astronomers have noticed the same pattern of progressively twisting spirals in about a dozen other galaxies. But it does help them make more sense of our galaxy.

Because we live in this galaxy, that makes it harder to observe, and dust and starlight make it even more difficult when using telescopes. Trying to determine what our galactic center looks like is similar to trying to find the center of a forest you’re standing in.

“It is extremely difficult to determine distances from the Sun to parts of the Milky Way’s outer gas disk without having a clear idea of what that disk actually looks like,” lead study author Xiaodian Chen of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing said in a statement.

From afar, the Milky Way appears like a thin rotating(旋转的) disk of stars, orbiting the center every few hundred million years. In the center, hundreds of billions of stars and dark matter hold the galaxy together.

But as you move toward the outermost reaches of the galaxy, the gravitational glue of the center fades. In the outer disk, this keeps hydrogen gas from being restricted, which contributes to an S-shaped warping.

“Somewhat to our surprise, we found that in 3D our collection of 1339 stars and the Milky Way’s gas disk follow each other closely. This offers new insights into the formation of our home galaxy,” Richard de Grijs, senior study co-author and professor at Macquarie University’s Department of Physics and Astronomy, said in a statement. “Perhaps more importantly, in the Milky Way’s outer regions, we found that the S-like stellar(星的) disk is warped in a progressively Twisted spiral pattern.”

So the massive inner disk’s rotational force causes the outer disk to warp, the researchers concluded.

“This research provides a crucial updated map for studies of our galaxy’s stellar motions and the origins of the Milky Way,” said Licai Deng, co-author and senior researcher at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in a statement.

Here’s something to consider: A recent study conducted by the

University of Michigan’s

Transportation Research Institute found more teens are delaying getting their driver’s licenses.

Teens and young adults would rather surf the Web and stay connected via smartphones and computers, than get out of the house.

A University of Michigan study found 31 percent of 16­year­olds had driver’s licenses in 2008, compared to 46 percent in 1983.

The trend was also found in other age groups. For example, among 18­year­olds, the percentage with licenses dropped from 80 percent in 1983 to 65 percent in 2008.

Once, the great American teen dream was to own a car and leave mom and dad and hang out with friends. Not so much anymore.

Here’s what Michael Sivak, a research professor involved in the university’s study said, “It is possible that the availability of virtual contact through electronic means reduces the need for actual contact among young people. Besides, some young people feel that driving interferes with (干扰) texting and other electronic communication.”

Some other reasons young people aren’t anxious to get behind the wheel: Many schools no longer offer driver training courses, so getting a license costs more. And graduated license requirements limit how many passengers a young person can carry, and the hours he or she can drive.

Much of this downturn happened before the Great Recession (不景气) began in 2008, so the costs of gas and car ownership cannot be pointed to as a cause.

There’s no sign young people will do without car ownership as they get older, but even if deals are delayed a few years, there will be an effect on the economy. America is a country that depends greatly on the car.

And America has always been a country characterized by its willingness to be mobile, to head for places unexplored, to just get up and go.

Now, it seems we’re willing to stay in and stare at a display while tapping out thoughts and messages. In­person interactivity is slowly being exchanged for Web­based interactivity.

What’s really been lost is a sense of curiosity and adventure. How sad.

Many of us were told from an early age that, “you learn from your mistakes”. But is this actually true?

The short answer is “yes” — failure can be a teachable moment. But learning from our mistakes is, in reality, very hard because we don’t like to fail. It doesn’t feel good, so we react to failure in impulsive and emotional ways, like giving up on a task prematurely, telling ourselves we don’t care whether we succeed, or finding fault with the task itself. This is self-protective, according to Hallgeir, a professor of psychology at the Norwegian School of Economics. “Most of us want to think of ourselves as competent”, he says, so when we fail “it poses a serious threat to our self-image”.

Fortunately, there is research to suggest that there are some strategies to help us overcome the emotional barriers around failure. One of them is to adopt a third-person perspective. Instead of asking “Why did I fail?”, we could ask “Why did Sam fail?”, for example. Multiple studies by psychologist Ethan Kross at the University of Michigan show that adopting a third-person perspective helps to soften our negative emotional reactions, allowing us to look at failure more objectively.

A second strategy involves offering advice to others who may be in the same position as us. This strategy led to better levels of motivation and academic success in the test groups — involving both adults and children — that were asked to give advice based on their own failures. Professors Eskreis-Winkler and Duckworth found that the satisfaction of helping others “forces people to engage with their experience and what they have learned”.

The writer Samuel Beckett once said: “fail again, fail better”. But it now seems that we should be saying: “fail again, fail smarter”. Failure is an unavoidable part of life, but by learning to overcome the emotional barriers around it, we may find the road to success is a little easier to navigate (确定方向).