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"Kabir Recommends: The Positivity Self Test is a brief, 20-item survey that asks you to report on your experiences of several emotions over the past 24 hours. Each item on the test includes a trio of words that are related, but not quite the same, for example, "hopeful, optimistic, or encouraged" and "sad, downhearted, or unhappy." With this strategy, each item captures a set of emotions that share a key resemblance and this short test becomes that much more accurate. Keep in mind that the Positivity Self Test merely provides a snapshot of your emotions. Everybody's emotions change by the day, hour, and minute. Some scientists would say that they change by the millisecond. Given your ever-shifting emotional landscape, any single measure of your positivity ratio can only capture so much. One way to overcome such measurement hurdles is to measure repeatedly. Even if you complete the Positivity Self Test as honestly as possible, you should view your score for any given day with some skepticism. Was this particular day representative? Probably not. Days vary. So the more days you can average together to create your estimate, the more trustworthy that estimate becomes. You can get a clear picture of your typical positivity ratio by completing the Positivity Self Test every evening for two weeks. Take the Positivity Self Test In the scientific literature, the Positivity Self Test is also know as the modified Differential Emotions Scale, or mDES, created by Dr. Fredrickson based on an earlier scale developed by pioneering emotion scientist, Carroll Izard. The scholarly references are: Fredrickson, B. L. (in press). Positive emotions broaden and build. In E. Ashby Plant & P. G. Devine (Eds.) Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. Elsevier. Fredrickson, B. L., Tugade, M. M., Waugh, C. E., & Larkin, G. (2003). What good are positive emotions in crises? A prospective study of resilience and emotions following the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11

Recommended by Trish Makowiak: How can you tell if the bold headlines seen on social media are truly touting the next big thing or if the article isn't worth the paper it's printed on? Understanding Medical Studies, will provide you with the tools and skills you need to critically interpret medical studies, and determine for yourself the difference between good and bad science. The course covers study-design, research methods, and statistical interpretation. It also delves into the dark side of medical research by covering fraud, biases, and common misinterpretations of data. Each lesson will highlight case-studies from real-world journal articles. By the end of this course, you'll have the tools you need to determine the trustworthiness of the scientific information you're reading and, of course, whether or not your Facebook friend is wrong. This course was made possible in part by the George M. O'Brien Kidney Center at Yale.

Henry W. Mahncke*†, Bonnie B. Connor*, Jed Appelman*, Omar N. Ahsanuddin*, Joseph L. Hardy*, Richard A. Wood*,Nicholas M. Joyce*, Tania Boniske*, Sharona M. Atkins*, and Michael M. Merzenich*†‡*Posit Science Corporation, 225 Bush Street, San Francisco, CA 94104; and‡Keck Center for Integrative Neurosciences, University of California, 513 ParnassusAvenue, Box 0472, Room HSE-836, San Francisco, CA 94143Contributed by Michael M. Merzenich, June 27, 2006

"This pandemic has been studied more intensely in a shorter amount of time than any other human event. Our globalized world has rapidly generated and shared a vast amount of information about it. It is inevitable that there will be bad as well as good data in that mix. These massive, decentralized, and crowd-sourced data can reliably be converted to life-saving knowledge if tempered by expertise, transparency, rigor, and collaboration. When making your own decisions, read closely, trust carefully, and when in doubt, look to the experts."