Time, of course, seems real to us. We live in and through time. But to physicists, time's fundamental reality is an illusion.

Ever since Newton, physicists have been developing ever-more exact laws describing the behavior of the world. These laws live outside of time because they don't change. That means these laws are more real than time.

The idea of timeless laws works fine when it's applied to parts of the Universe, like jet planes and GPS satellites, but Smolin argues, "it falls apart when applied to the Universe as whole."

Clear Lake found that Rogers could recruit an abnormally high number of muscle fibers. But was this ability because of a freak genetic mutation? Another possibility, which Rogers thinks is more likely, is the way he processes pain when he strains those muscles.

What if, instead of superpowered muscles, Rogers has a normal—though extremely well exercised—body, and his abilities arise because he can withstand more pain than most mere mortals?

Rogers reasons that, unlike in the dentist's office—where he has no control over the pain that is inflicted on him—he has direct executive control over pain that he inflicts on himself. “I know it's coming, I have an idea of what to expect and I can decide to ignore it,” he says. Confronted with severe pain, most people fear that they will damage their body permanently if they persist, so they stop well before they are in real danger, Rogers explains.

fine line between procrastination and being “pressure prompted.” If you’re like me and pressure prompted, you are someone who often does your best work when faced with a looming deadline. While being pressure prompted may entail a bit of procrastination, it is procrastination within acceptable limits. In other words, it is a set of conditions that offers just enough pressure to ensure you’re at the top of your game without divulging into chaos or most importantly, impacting other members of your team by preventing them from delivering their best work in a timely manner.

Procrastination is a condition that has consequences on one’s mental and physical health and performance at school and in the workplace.

Piers Steel defines procrastination as “a self-regulatory failure leading to poor performance and reduced well-being.” Notably, Steel further emphasizes that procrastination is both common (80% to 90% of college-age students suffer from it at least some of the time) and something most people (95%) wish to overcome.

I thought about the sales people I worked with, and the really good sales people I have known. The best are persistent, persuasive, strategic thinkers, energetic, able to offer compelling arguments to overcome resistance. Many, as you would expect, are really good talkers. But if I had to pick just one quality, that all of these individuals share, it would be this: The ability to listen.

Most of us don't really listen very well. Or if we do manage to listen, we are often just waiting until the other person finishes so that we can say what is on OUR mind. And that's not really listening.

Try really listening to a difficult business colleague or client. And when they finish, don't let your self-assertion jump in with "yes, but.....". Get rid of the word "but" altogether, it only serves to negate everything the person you are listening to has just said. Instead, if you do say anything, try asking "What else?"

The list of physical and mental problems that we know come from sleeping too little is getting longer.  A new study suggests another: shorting ourselves on sleep may lead to making riskier decisions, and we may not even realize we’re doing it.

The researchers were also interested in how the participants perceived their decisions—if they saw them as more risky than they’d otherwise be, given a few more hours of sleep. Most of the participants said they didn’t see any difference. “We therefore do not notice that we are acting riskier when suffering from a lack of sleep," said Christian Baumann

The good news is that for most of us this is a problem with a solution, although we’re up against some tough distractions to reach it. A diet of streaming, social media and video games is eating up more of our evening hours, along with the traditional sleep erasers like stress.

Many animals store food to use in times of scarcity, but humans are stockpilers too — individuals routinely keep money in the bank (or under their mattress) and cans in the pantry. However, in some individuals, this collecting behavior is taken to extremes in the form of compulsive hoarding — collecting excessive amounts of objects that have little or no value. Preston found that, across species, including humans, anxiety and threats appear to increase the motivation to acquire and collect food and goods

Responses to positive and negative feedback in the ventral striatum were greatly reduced under stress as compared to when there was no stress, suggesting that stress may dampen your perception of the subjective value of a decision.

Gaining a better understanding of how stress affects decision making is critical not only for psychological science, but has important, real-world implications

Resilient people retain their sense of control by acknowledging their lack of control.

When an unexpected or unwanted change happens, it's as if resilient people draw a horizontal line. Above that line, they list uncontrollable issues. Below the line, they list controllable issues.

They give controllable issues a "Fix-and-Focus" treatment.

For people who get anxious when there is a change in environment, just arriving at an airport can signal a perceived threat to the brain

And a mix of psychological factors related to the plane’s altitude and a perceived loss of control can cause a person to break down emotionally once in the air, DeLuca says.

“When you’re dehydrated, it’s not just the body that’s lacking in resources,” De Luca says. “Everything is affected”—including behavior and the brain. “Some people have difficulty self-regulating their emotions.”

The Feynman trap—ransacking data for patterns without any preconceived idea of what one is looking for—is the Achilles heel of studies based on data mining. Finding something unusual or surprising after it has already occurred is neither unusual nor surprising. Patterns are sure to be found, and are likely to be misleading, absurd, or worse.

A standard neuroscience experiment involves showing a volunteer in an MRI machine various images and asking questions about the images. The measurements are noisy, picking up magnetic signals from the environment and from variations in the density of fatty tissue in different parts of the brain. Sometimes they miss brain activity; sometimes they suggest activity where there is none.A Dartmouth graduate student used an MRI machine to study the brain activity of a salmon as it was shown photographs and asked questions. The most interesting thing about the study was not that a salmon was studied, but that the salmon was dead. Yep, a dead salmon purchased at a local market was put into the MRI machine, and some patterns were discovered. There were inevitably patterns—and they were invariably meaningless.

Because our human senses are adapted for ground use, sensory input during a night flight may not accurately reflect the movement of the aircraft. This inaccurate reflection can cause something known as a sensory illusion.

The inversion illusion is caused when abrupt change from climb to straight-and-level flight stimulates the otolith organs in the body, creating an illusion of tumbling backwards. As a response to this illusion, pilots may push the aircraft into a nose-low altitude intensifying the illusion.