In recent years, a lot of “business thinking” books have been published, all of which search for new answers on how to run organizations effectively. Obliquity tells us that the most profitable companies are not the most aggressive in chasing profits. Wikinomics demonstrates new models of production based on community and collaboration. Peter Miller’s new book, Smart Swarm, however, challenge leaders to think differently. He studied creatures, like bees and ants and he found their habits, actions and instincts can be applied to business. Miller believes his book is the first time anyone has explained the science behind management theory. “The examples of how ant colonies (蚁群) or beehives (蜂窝) work are appealing models for organizations and systems that can be applied in a business context,” he says.

So how exactly can bees help run organizations? “By the way they work independently before they work together,” Miller says. “Picture a huge beehive hanging on a tree, with about 5,000 bees competing for space. They know their population is getting too big, leaving them unsafe. They must all agree to find a new home. In today’s business environment, managers need to be able to make the right decisions under intense pressure. Yet, it is clear that some of the best-paid leaders in some of the biggest organizations can get it dramatically wrong. How is it that they can fail to make efficient business decisions when a large group of bees can make a critical decision about their hive in just a few seconds?”

According to Miller, “swarm theory” can help managers in three simple steps: discover, test and evaluate. The bees first realize they have a problem. They then fly into the neighborhood to find potential new sites. They come back and perform a “dance” to get other bees to follow them. Eventually, the bees with the best dance attract the most votes – and a decision is made. Miller says. “The bee example tells you that you need to seek out diversity in your team. You need to have a way of gathering up quite different ideas so you can make sure you pick the right one.”

Ants, in addition, can help businesses organize workflow and people. In an ant colony, there is no leader. Ants are self-organized, and respond to their environment and each other. One ant on its own could not raid (袭击) a kitchen cupboard, but one ant telling the next one that it’s worth following him to find food ends up creating a food chain. “In an ant colony, you get the right number going in and out searching for food, you get the right number taking care of the babies,” Miller says. “As a manager, this can tell you that your hierarchy (等级制度) is getting in the way of getting the work done.”

The oceans are where life on Earth began and they continue to be the home to an incredibly various range of life. It has been estimated(估计)that there are around 230, 000 different marine (海洋)species, but some marine biologists think that there could well be ten times that number still waiting to be discovered.

Oceans have always played an important part in human life. They serve many functions Since the beginning of time oceans have provided the world with a transport network for goods and people. That's why most of the major cities of the world are close to the sea. Countless numbers of people from other countries have travelled the seas to find a new and better life, while others have been transported very much against their will, the evil Slave Trade being a case in point. World trade has always depended on ocean transport and the world's navies grew up in order to protect these sea trade routes.

The ocean has traditionally been a source of nutritious food, but sadly the general view has always been that what was there was for the taking. There has been little regard for sustainability (可持续性)and in the words of Greenpeace: "We are now damaging our oceans on a scale unimaginable to most people."

Large commercial fishing boats catch everything, but not everything is wanted or allowed due to some restrictions and vast amounts of dead fish are thrown back into the sea. Whole marine ecosystems can be wiped out as huge nets are dragged across the ocean floor, destroying entire home ground forever.

Overfishing in this way does not enable the fish to sustain their population. As a result, numbers fall until the point is reached when there are no longer any fish left to catch. Some species have been fished to extinction and some are almost on the edge. It is said that due to overfishing, large predatory (捕食性的)fish like cod and tuna are both down to the last 10% of their original number.

GENETIC testing cannot tell teachers anything useful about an individual pupil’s educational achievement. That is the conclusion of a study that looked at how well so-called polygenic scores for education predict a person’s educational achievements, based on a long-term study of thousands of people in the UK. “Some people with a very low genetic score are very high performers at age 16. Some are even in the top 3 percent,” says Tim Morris at the University of Bristol, UK.

And while Morris expects the accuracy of polygenic scores for educational achievements to improve, he doesn’t think they will ever be good enough to predict how well an individual will do. Even relatively simple qualities such as height are influenced by thousands of genetic variants, each of which may only have a tiny effect. It has been claimed that polygenic scores can be used to make useful predictions, such as a person’s likelihood of developing various diseases. One company is even offering embryo screening (screening of an unborn baby in the very stages of development) based on polygenic scores for disease risk.

Some researchers - notably Robert Plomin of King’s College London - think that schools should start using polygenic scores for educational achievement. In most cases, the scores may reflect qualities such as persistence as well as intelligence.

To assess the usefulness of polygenic scores in education, Morris and his colleagues calculated them for 8,000 people in Bristol who are part of a long-term study known as the Children of the 90s. The participants’ genomes have been queued and their academic results are available to researchers. Among other things, the team found a correlation of 0.4 between a person’s polygenic score and their exam results at age 16. But there would need to be a correlation of at least 0.8 to make useful predictions about individuals, says Morris.

Plomin, however, argues that the results support his opinion. “A correlation of 0.4 makes it the strongest polygenic predictor in the behavioural sciences,” says Plomin. “It’s so much stronger than a lot of other things we base decisions on. So it’s a very big finding.”

Morris says schools already have access to other predictors that are more accurate, such as a pupil’s earlier test results. Looking at parents’ educational achievements is also a better predictor of a pupil’s academic results than studying their genome, his results show. Providing teachers with an extra predictor based on genetics would just confuse matters, says Morris, and the cost cannot be justified.