Many exceptional human skills, such as reading and mastering a musical instrument, require thousands of hours of practice and consistent cognitive effort. Popular scientific theories hold that cognitive effort is experienced as unpleasant and people try to avoid it whenever possible.

However, there are many situations in everyday life in which people seem to exert themselves (努力)voluntarily, even if there is no obvious external reward. For example, many people enjoy solving Sudoku puzzles, students are often motivated by challenging intellectual tasks, and amateur pianists can spend hours striving for perfection without any external reward.

It is based on these facts that researchers from the University of Vienna and the Technische Universitat Dresden critically questioned whether cognitive effort is always aversive(令人嫌恶的) and sought to address this question in a current project of the Collaborative Research Center(SFB) 940.

In the first experiment with 121 participants, the researchers used cardiovascular measurements (activity of the heart)to determine how hard people exerted themselves in cognitive tasks of varying difficulty levels. In one group, reward was directly determined by effort: if a person exerted more effort on difficult levels of the task, they received a higher reward than on easier levels in which they exerted little effort. In the control group, the reward was randomly assigned and was independent of how much effort someone invested. The total reward on offer was kept constant between groups, with only the contingency(可能性)between effort and reward being manipulated.

Subsequently, all subjects worked on math tasks where they could choose the difficulty level of the tasks they wanted to work on. “Subjects who had previously been rewarded for effort subsequently chose more difficult tasks than subjects in the control group, even though they were aware that they would no longer receive an external reward, ” explains Prof. Veronika Job from the Faculty of Psychology at the University of Vienna.

“The results showed the assumption that people want to take the path of least resistance may not be an inherent(固有的)characteristic of human motivation. The tendency to avoid challenging tasks could rather be the result of individual learning histories that differ depending on the reward pattern: was it mainly performance or effort that was rewarded?” concludes Thomas Goschke, Professor of General Psychology at TU Dresden and spokesperson of SFB 940.

Metaverse (元宇宙)

You’ve probably started to hear this word being thrown around lately. If you’re feeling lost, you’re in the right place. Here, we’ll try to answer some big questions from Microsoft’s point of view. What is a metaverse? Does it already exist? 【小题1】 Let’s dig in.

Simply put, a metaverse is a digital space inhabited by digital representations of people, places and things. Think of it like a new version, or maybe a new vision, of the Internet. 【小题2】 Now we can actually go into that place to communicate, share, and work with others. It’s an Internet that you can actually interact with — like we do in the physical world.

And it’s not just a vision anymore. Right now, you can go to a concert and experience a show with other real people inside a video game. 【小题3】 Those are metaverses. And the future is already here!

【小题4】 “But my digital self is not my physical self.” Well that is technically true. But Microsoft is working to help you better represent your whole self in the digital space, while also ensuring that you can bring your humanity and your agency over with that representation.

If the past few years have taught us anything, it’s that we need flexibility. The world has never been more connected, but lately, we’ve often needed to distance ourselves physically. The closer we can reflect our physical selves in the digital world, the more of these barriers we can break down. Teammates can join meetings from anywhere. Real-time translation allows people from diverse cultures to collaborate in real-time. 【小题5】 The metaverse has the ability to take us beyond the barriers and limitations of the physical world.

I bet your grandparents never imagined they would see the day when they could plug in a car like a lamp. No more smelly gasoline (汽油)! No more waste gases polluting the atmosphere! One way to address the climate crisis, we are told, is to electrify transport. This will remove our dependence on fossil fuels like gasoline that pollute the atmosphere and trap greenhouse gases that make our planet warmer. Currently, electric vehicles make up 2 percent of the global car market. The U.S. plans to have at least half of all vehicles sold in the U.S. run completely on electricity by 2035 and stop making gas-powered cars within the next 20 years.

However, electric cars use 1-2 kg of magnets (磁体) to power them and each of these magnets uses special materials. It turns out that getting the required supplies is harder than you think. Let’s find out why.

Rare earth metals (also called Rare Earth Elements or REEs) have strong magnetic properties that make them ideal for powering many of the devices we use today, such as smartphones, computers and electric car batteries. REEs aren’t really rare, at least not in the way you might think. Even the rarest REE is 125 times more common than gold! REEs are “rare” because they are mostly found only in small quantities. Generally, they are found in a rare igneous rock (火成岩) called carbonate (碳酸盐), which contains 17 minerals — which must all be separated. The process is hard, dirty and can be very expensive. Keep in mind, however, that producing and processing are different steps. Producing is the act of mining metals; processing is the act of separating the minerals. Many countries mine carbonate including the United States, Australia, Brazil and Canada. China alone produces 63 percent of REEs today, which is down from a high of 90 percent! China now controls 85 percent of REEs processing. That is because the producing countries send their REEs to China for processing.

Electric cars are increasing in popularity with many traditional car companies introducing all-electric models. This switch will increase the demand for REEs which is prompting car companies to work directly with the mines to save costs. Many people still have concerns about the environmental effects of increased mining. Though several companies are working to go green, mining is known to have a history with known dangers such as pollution and the risk of deadly accidents. The mining of these metals is even known to produce radioactive (放射性的) wastewater!

A new chapter in climate history is possible if mining can be done safely. In fewer than a hundred years, most cars on the road will use electricity or two different types of power. The traditional cars, harmful to the environment, will be a thing of the past.