Are you patient? Do you have attention to detail, free time and access to a computer? Well, then a scientist might welcome your help. Researchers in the UK say it’s becoming important to count on common people to help them with their projects. They need people to examine data and submit their observations online.

British teenagers Sasha and Matthew are taking part in a study of penguins (企鹅) from the comfort of their homes. The pair look at pictures and tag (加标签于) photos identifying adults, chicks and eggs. Every click of their mouse is helping to build up a detailed picture of penguin colonies (群). They, and thousands of others, are helping scientists to understand why some colonies are growing and others are decreasing. Within the first four hours of Penguin Watch going live, “citizen scientists” marked more images than the research team did in five years.

Dr. Tom Hart, Penguin Watch Coordinator at Oxford University, says, “When you go beyond what a scientist can analyse to what a mass audience can do, then it increases beyond what any other project could do.”

The British Science Association says families are helping out with careful research. It made a difference to the Planet Hunters Project, which ran for five years. Volunteers looked at dots which showed how the brightness of a star changed at different points in its solar system.

According to Dr. Robert Simpson from Oxford University, who took part in the project, the volunteers discovered planets and these are now in published papers. He says with pride, “We can go and look at these planets with other telescopes and we know they exist because of those helpers.”

But how do scientists guard their research against accidental or deliberate mistakes in observation? Dr. Simpson isn’t worried. “We get lots of people looking at the same things, ”he says. The researcher warns that people who are mistakenly clicking on the site are very obvious and can be identified very quickly. So, there’s no fooling the scientists.

And to make sure things go well, the Penguin Watch paper will go through a peer review before being published. After that, every “citizen scientist” will be credited.

How to eat healthfully can be especially complex for working women who often have neither the desire nor the time to cook for themselves (or for anyone else). Registered dietitian (营养学家) Barbara Morrissey suggests that a few simple rules can help.

“Go for nutrient-dense (营养丰富的) foods,” she suggests. “Foods that contain a multiple of nutrients. For example, select whole wheat bread as a breakfast food, rather than coffeecake. Or drink orange juice rather than orange drink, which contains only a small percentage of real juice — the rest is largely colored sugar water. You just can’t compare the value of these foods, the nutrient-dense ones are so excellent,” she emphasizes.

Morrissey believes that variety is not only the spice of life — it’s the foundation of a healthful diet. Diets, which are based on one or two foods, are not only virtually impossible to keep up the strength; they can be very harmful, she says, because nutrients aren’t supplied in sufficient amounts or balance.

According to Morrissey, trying to find a diet that will cure your illness, or make yourself a superwoman is a fruitless search. As women, many of us are too concerned with staying thin, she says, and we believe that vitamins are some kind of magic cure to replace food.

“We need carbohydrates, protein and fat — they are like the wood in the fireplace. The vitamins and minerals are the match, the spark, for the fuel,” she explains. “We need them all, but in a very different proportions (比例). And if the fuel isn’t there, the spark is useless.”

Joy is an emotion experienced by many but understood by few. It often refers to a broad sense of being satisfied with life that appears after experiencing a sense of awe or wonder. It also relates to accomplishing something we’ve wanted for a long time. It’s usually mistaken for happiness, but joy is experienced naturally, while happiness is often pursued.

Joy triggers (引发) a series of physical and psychological changes that can improve our health. When joyous, our breathing becomes faster, our heartbeat increases, and our chest and entire body feel warmer. These changes make our body prepared for movement and also make us feel more mentally prepared to take on life’s challenges. These changes in body and mind are also associated with improved mood.

Interestingly, joy is both a state and a trait (特质). This means that while some of us only experience it as a result of a joyful situation, others have a capacity for it, that is to say, they’re able to experience joy regardless of whether they’ve encountered something joyful. Some research suggests that this capacity is genetic, with estimates that about 30% of people have this “gift for joy”. This means they’re hardly influenced by their external environment and may find it easier to experience joy.

But just because some people may find it easier to experience joy, that doesn’t mean we can do nothing to help boost our experience of it. Sharing and preparing food with others can help us experience more joy, as it can enhance what’s known as psychological flourishing — the highest level of wellbeing. Researchers also find that doing exercise in company with other people or accomplishing an exercise-related goal we never thought we were capable of can lead to joy. Another simple way to boost feelings of joy is by writing down how you feel. In one experiment, participants who spent 20 minutes a day writing about positive experiences for three months reported better moods compared with participants who wrote about different topics.

However, while joy is wonderful to experience, it isn’t the only emotion we’ll feel in our life. It’s important to embrace all the emotions we experience — be that sadness, anger, happiness or joy.