Imagine a perfect day: the weather is good and everything seems fine. When, suddenly, your mobile phone loses its signal , the television has no programs, and you can’t get online with your computer.

What has happened? These are just the types of problems a solar storm（太阳风暴）might cause. You may not think of storms as putting our society in danger. But today, a solar storm is as serious as other bad events, such as earthquakes.

A solar storm is caused by solar flares（太阳耀斑）: large explosions（爆炸）near the sun that can give off lots of energy. The strong energy can stop the satellite systems（卫星系统）that control our computers, telecom networks and so on. These storms can even cause the power to go out for weeks or months.

In the past few months, scientists have recorded some of the strongest sun flares in years. The most recent one happened around Valentine’s Day, 2011. It caused radio and satellite signals to go down in some northern cities in China.

“Solar flare activity is going to be much worse than what we’ve seen in the past. We’re not talking about a few cities losing power, it could be half of the country, maybe more.”Solar Storm Warning.com, a US website about space weather, warned.

A sense of belonging to a group of co-workers is a better motivator for some employees than money, according to a study by University of Lowa researchers. “We find that some self-managed teams show increased performance, when their members work together well,” says Greg Stewart, the lead professor in the study.

At the beginning, Stewart’s group studied how managers of self-managed teams decided payment. They studied 587 workers in 45 self-managed teams in Lowa. The members were allowed to give suggestions on how much their teammates should be paid for their work. The managers collected their ideas and then made decisions. The members were asked about how much their team spirit attracted them, and managers were asked about the productivity of both individuals and teams.

“In high functioning teams the group members work actively with each other, and they encourage and support each other,” says Stephen Courtright, member of the research group. The reason is that peer pressure acts as an important social force. Members don’t want to disappoint their teammate, so team spirit is more effective even than money as a motivating tool. People have a social need to be accepted, to be regarded as a part of a group and want to perform well.

However, this works only when team members get along. When they don’t, then self-managed teams perform badly. When team members don’t care much for each other, Courtright says team spirit as a motivating factor won’t work. So money becomes the main motivating factor to improve productivity.

The carrot and stick method is that managers offer team members things in order to persuade them to work and punish them if they refuse. “Teams perform better when there is pressure from peers to perform well than when managers wave a carrot and stick,” Courtright says. “However, the carrot and stick method works well when team members just can’t get along.”

Anger is good for you, as long as you control it, according to new psychology research. A new study from Carnegie Mellon University shows anger may help people reduce the negative effects of stress and help you become healthier.

“Here getting emotional is not bad for you if you look at the case of anger,” said Jennifer Lerner of Carnegie Mellon. “The more people show anger, the lower their stress responses.”

Lerner studied 92 UCLA students by asking them to count back from 6,200. They must say out loud every thirteenth number. Researchers disturbed them by asking them to count faster or ask them other questions. If they made any mistakes, they had to restart from the very beginning. Many students felt upset about making so many mistakes or got angry.

Lerner used a hidden video camera and recorded all their facial expressions during the test. The researchers describe their reactions as fear, anger.

Other researchers recorded the students’ blood pressure, pulse and production of a high-stress hormone (荷尔蒙) called cortisol. People whose faces showed more fear during the experiment had higher blood pressure and higher levels of the hormone. Both can have lasting effects such as diabetes (糖尿病), heart disease, depression and extra weight gain.

When people feel fear, negative effects increase, but when they get angry, those negatives go down, according to the study.

“Having that sense of anger leads people to actually feel some power in what otherwise is a maddening (令人发狂的) situation,” Lerner said.

Lerner previously studied Americans’ emotional response to the 9·11 terrorist attacks (9·11 恐怖袭击) two months after the incident. She found people who reacted with anger were more optimistic. These people are healthier compared with those who were frightened during the event. So in maddening situations, anger is not a bad thing to have. It’s a healthier response than fear.