“In her very first lecture, Santos emphasizes to her class that she wants to teach them not just the science of happiness but the practice of happiness. And happiness, it turns out, does take practice. But first you have to learn what exactly happiness is. If previous courses in this field might have been characterized as “Why Happy People Are Happy,” this course could be called “What Is Happiness, Why Aren’t You Happy, and What Can You Do to Change That?””

New research showed the recipients of an emailed expression of gratitude felt much more “ecstatic” than writers expected.

“What you eat makes a huge difference in how optimally your body operates. And what you spend time reading and learning equally affects how effectively your mind operates.

Increasingly, we’re filling our heads with soundbites, the mental equivalent of junk. Over a day or even a week, the changes, like those to our belly, are barely noticeable. However, if we extend the timeline to months and years, we face a worrying reality and may find ourselves looking down at the pot-belly of ignorance. If you think of your mind as a library, three things should concern you…..”

“The most important period where the microbes have an influence in shaping not just our digestive system but also the nervous system and other organ functions is during the first three years of life … Initially, it’s a very simple architecture of bacteria that primarily metabolize and live on human breast milk. Then gradually they turn into something that’s very similar to the complex microbiome of an adult. That period is nearly complete after three years. From that time on, it’s a fairly stable system.”

A growing body of research suggests that healthy sleep habits might be effective in preventing the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.

An explanation of Amazon’s 14 Leadership Principles including “Customer Obsession,” “Are Right, A Lot,” and “Dive In,” with personal, real life examples for each.

“The best entrepreneurs make decisions quickly and are at best right 70% of the time but recover quickly when presented with new data. I’ll take a good decision now over a perfect decision in 6 months any day of the week in a startup. And what most startups don’t realize. There are far greater consequences for the decisions you fudge than the decisions you make.”

Build trust and fuel organizational performance by focusing on these 8 components.

“The Cynefin framework provides a wonderful way to sort the range of issues faced by leaders and us all, into five contexts, defined by the nature of the relationships between cause and effect. Dave Snowden has been explaining these consistently for years. Four of these five are; obvious (formerly simple), complicated, complex and chaotic states and requires us to diagnose situations and then to act in contextually appropriate ways. The fifth one is disorder, often overlooked or not fully appreciated.”

A project called the “Biometric Mirror” shows users the amazing power of artificial intelligence, but also the dangers of algorithms that use biased data.

An international team of scientists has moved closer to creating artificial embryos after using mouse stem cells to make structures capable of taking a crucial step in the development of life.

“The future became less a thing we create through our present-day choices or hopes for humankind than a predestined scenario we bet on with our venture capital but arrive at passively…..The very essence of what it means to be human is treated less as a feature than bug. Being human is not about individual survival or escape. It’s a team sport. Whatever future humans have, it will be together.”

“The first big idea is to create a decentralized marketplace that would help create better AI.

The high level idea is as follows: All of us (individuals, institutions) would be financially incentivized to provide our personal and professional data. Knowing it would be kept completely secure and private (through decentralization and secure computing), we’d feel more comfortable sharing sensitive data (spending, health information). Over time, the marketplace(s) would accumulate a lot more data, and higher quality data, than what GAFA has access to.  ”

A new paper argues that “dissociative identity disorder” might help us understand the fundamental nature of reality