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Do the languages we speak shape the way we think? And can learning new ways to talk change how you think? Stanford psychologist Lera Boroditsky examines these questions and more in this insightful look at the developing field of cognitive linguistics.

"Since 1955, The Journal of Irreproducible Results has offered "spoofs, parodies, whimsies, burlesques, lampoons and satires" about life in the laboratory. Among its greatest hits: "Acoustic Oscillations in Jell-O, With and Without Fruit, Subjected to Varying Levels of Stress" and "Utilizing Infinite Loops to Compute an Approximate Value of Infinity." The good-natured jibes are a backhanded celebration of science. What really goes on in the lab is, by implication, of a loftier, more serious nature."

"Keep practicing, and you might become an expert. Or maybe you won't. Who knows? Not the experts, suggests a raging debate. Made famous by Outliers: The Story of Success, by Malcolm Gladwell, the 2008 book's "10,000-hour rule"-the number of  hours of practice needed to acquire mastery of a skill-looks increasingly beleaguered. Underlying arguments over whether winners are made or born, or over nature versus nurture, the disagreement points to deep uncertainty about who should receive expert instruction and how best to teach people to excel. "No one disputes that practice is important," says psychologist David Zachary Hambrick of Michigan State University in East Lansing. "Through practice, people get better. The question is whether that is all there is to it.""

This is the article for the Typhoon Day lesson

"Baber lets his surroundings serve as his orchestra and his inspiration: "It all came from when I was a little kid hearing the spokes of my bike and imagining, 'Oh, I wish I could play that like I could play these other instruments." Lately he has been doing just that: making music from sounds created by bicycle parts. "There's something really exciting and fascinating about discovering these sounds that maybe nobody's ever made on a bike," Baber said."

"And then the New York Times took on the issue this week, with a feature on how "The Literary Canon Could Make Students Squirm." In it, writer Jennifer Medina reports that students at "Oberlin College, Rutgers University, the University of Michigan, George Washington University and other schools" have this year all requested trigger warnings accompany certain classroom materials."

"It uses an "emotional engine" and a cloud-based artificial intelligence system that allows it to analyse gestures, expressions and voice tones. The firm said people could communicate with it "just like they would with friends and family" and it could perform various tasks. It will go on sale to the public next year for 198,000 yen ($1,930; £1,150). "People describe others as being robots because they have no emotions, no heart," Masayoshi Son, chief executive of Softbank, said at a press conference. "For the first time in human history, we're giving a robot a heart, emotions.""

"France is emerging from one of its worst security crises in decades after three days of attacks by gunmen brought bloodshed to the capital Paris and its surrounding areas. It began with a massacre at the offices of satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo on Wednesday 7 January and ended with a huge police operation and two sieges two days later. Here is what we know about how events unfolded"

"the phrase #JeSuisCharlie-"I am Charlie"-was soon adopted worldwide by individuals and organizations eager to stand in solidarity with the magazine. But before we were all Charlie Hebdo, before Charlie Hebdo was a symbol of free speech and editorial courage, Charlie Hebdo was, for many, a symbol of Islamophobia, its cartoon depictions of the prophet Mohammed less an exercise in political courage than a gratuitous provocation of a marginalized religious group that has long been made to feel unwelcome in France. This is worth remembering, even now, even if, like me, you don't agree with the charges. Missing in much of the coverage of the events of the past few days is a sense of the demographic context in which they occurred. "We're talking about a country with 6 million Muslims, the biggest population in Europe, where Muslims experience all sorts of discriminations on a day-to-day basis," the French-Algerian journalist Nabila Ramdani told Sky News in 2011. "Many view [the Charlie Hebdo cartoons] as pure racism dressed up as satire.""

"Using examples from vacations to colonoscopies, Nobel laureate and founder of behavioral economics Daniel Kahneman reveals how our "experiencing selves" and our "remembering selves" perceive happiness differently. This new insight has profound implications for economics, public policy - and our own self-awareness."

Speaking more than two languages may have protective effect on memory http://ow.ly/1s4hrz #mentalhealth #polylingualism #language

'Motherese' important for children's #language development http://j.mp/itihmk @sunitadevadas

"The long-held theory helped to explain a part of the hearing process called "adaptation," or how humans can hear everything from the drop of a pin to a jet engine blast with high acuity, without pain or damage to the ear. Its overturning could have significant impact on future research for treating hearing loss, said Anthony Ricci, PhD, the Edward C. and Amy H. Sewall Professor of Otolaryngology and senior author of the study."

A healthy dose of boredom http://ow.ly/1tcHrV #productivity #emotion

"Criminal courts in the United States are facing a surge in the number of defendants arguing that their brains were to blame for their crimes and relying on questionable scans and other controversial, unproven neuroscience, a legal expert who has advised the president has warned."