Some of the best researches on daily experience are rooted in rates of positive and negative interactions, which have proved that being 【小题1】 positive or negative can cause others to be frustrated or annoyed or to simply tune out.

Over the last two decades, scientists have made remarkable predictions simply by watching people interact with one another and then 【小题2】 the conversations based on the rate of positive and negative interactions. Researchers have used the findings to predict everything from the likelihood that a couple will divorce to the chances of a work team with high customer satisfaction and 【小题3】 levels.

More recent researches help explain why these brief exchanges 【小题4】 so much. When you experience negative emotions as a result of criticism or 【小题5】, for example, your body produces higher levels of the stress hormone, which shuts down much of your thinking and activates (激活) conflict and defense mechanisms (机制). You assume that situations are worse than they 【小题6】 are.

When you experience a positive interaction, it activates a very different response. Positive exchanges increase your body’s production of oxytocin, a(n)【小题7】 hormone that increases your ability to communicate with, 【小题8】 with and trust others. But the effects of a positive occurrence are less dramatic and lasting than they are for a negative one.

We need at least three to five positive interactions to outweigh every one negative exchange. Bad moments simply 【小题9】 good ones. Whether you’re having a conversation, keep this simple short cut in mind: At least 80 percent of your conversations should be focused on what’s going right.

Workplaces, for example, often see this. During performance reviews, managers routinely spend 80 percent of their time on weaknesses and “areas for improvement”. They spend roughly 20 percent of the time on strengths and positive aspects. Any time you have discussions with a person or group, spend the vast majority of the time talking about what is working, and use the 【小题10】 time to address weaknesses.

Farm of the Future in the Sky

It is obviously early days for rooftop farms, but some effects were already evident. Instead of being big, dead spaces, roofs may act as booming ecosystems.

Here is a lesson that we’re going to be taught again and again in the coming years: Most animals are not just animals. They’re also 【小题1】 of microbes (微生物). If you really want to understand the animal, you also have to understand the world of microbes inside them. In other words, zoology is ecology.

Consider the western corn rootworm---- a beetle that’s a serious pest of corn in the US. The adults have strong preferences for laying eggs in corn fields, so that their underground larvae (幼虫) hatch into a 【小题2】 of corn roots. This life cycle depends on a continuous year-on-year supply of corn. Farmers can use this dependency against the rootworm, by planting soybean and corn in alternate years. These rotations (轮流) mean that rootworms lay eggs into corn fields but their larvae hatch among soybean, and die.

But the rootworms have 【小题3】 to this strategy by reducing their strong 【小题4】 for laying eggs in corn. These “rotation-resistant” females might lay among soybean fields, so their larvae hatch into a crop of corn.

There are almost certainly genetic differences that separate the rotation-resistant rootworms from their normal 【小题5】. Researchers at the University of Illinois began to study the genes of the bacteria in its gut (肠) and found some answers, after focusing on the rootworm’s own genes and found that the results were mostly inconclusive.

“The bad guy in the story----the western corn rootworm---was actually part of a multi-species plot,” says Joe Spencer, who was part of the study. “No wonder it was hard to figure out what was happening. We were only looking at the most obvious 【小题6】 of the story.”

If you really want to understand the animal, you also have to understand the microbes. The rootworm’s gut bacteria are effectively another one of its organs, but an 【小题7】 flexible change on that can happen dramatically when 【小题8】 to a new food source. This allows the insects to adapt very quickly to environmental challenges, far more quickly than if they could only rely on mutations (突变) in their own genes.

Spencer says, “Modern agriculture has always underestimated the ability of pests to avoid pest control, and I think the 【小题9】 that pest insects are not alone in their efforts should give us some 【小题10】. There is a brand new tiny world out there inside every creature, and we need to start thinking seriously about it.”