Humans are “creatures of habit”. Habits and other【C1】_____behaviors are so named【C2】__they require little planning or willpower. You just do them. But unfortunately, it【C3】_____with a group of critical brain operations known as the executive functions.

The executive functions are a set of attention【C4】_____skills that allow us to attend selectively to something, and to shift flexibly from one way of looking at it to another. They rely on working memory, willpower, and concentration. And there’s evidence that the less you【C5】__them, the weaker they become. If somebody creates routines in their life where they’re not being【C6】__and solving new problems, the brain networks supporting the executive functions would【C7】_____in the same way that unused muscles do.

Researchers have examined the【C8】_____between strong executive functioning and problems related to mood and behavior. They have found that poor executive functioning is linked to depression, drug abuse and antisocial behavior. If you don’t have a(n)【C9】__that allows you to【C10】__new challenges and to solve problems, then you will not be【C11】__the particular brain networks that are【C12】_____flexible, goal-directed problem solving.

【C13】_____much of this work, research has found that curiosity and a【C14】__for exploration—characteristics that lead people away from the routine and toward【C15】__experiences—are tightly linked with improved mood and a reduced risk for depression.【C16】__our brains may be programmed to conserve resources and【C17】__familiar situations and behaviors, too much predictability seems to【C18】_____our minds in ways that raise our risks for mental and cognitive dysfunction.

Good habits are a(n)【C19】_____of a healthy, happy, and productive life. But shaking things up with travel, with challenging tasks, and with other new experiences may prevent your habits from【C20】_____you down.

In the early days of the Internet, the idea that it represented an entirely new and separate realm, distinct from the real world, was seized upon by both advocates and critics of the new technology. Advocates liked the idea that the virtual world was a placeless datasphere, liberated from constraints and restrictions of the real world, and an opportunity for a fresh start. This view was expressed most clearly in the “Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace” issued by John Perry Barlow, an internet activist, in February 1996. “Governments of the industrial world, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from cyberspace, the new home of mind,” he thundered. “Cyberspace does not lie within your borders. Our world is different. We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth.”

Where Mr. Barlow and other cyber-Utopians found the separation between the real and virtual worlds exciting, however, critics regarded it as a cause for concern. They worried that people were spending too much time online, communing with people they had never even met in person in chat rooms, virtual game worlds and, more recently, on social-networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook. A study carried out by the Stanford Institute for the Quantitative Study of Society in 2000, for example, found that heavy internet users spent less time talking to friends and family, and warned that the internet could be “the ultimate isolating technology”.

Both groups were wrong, of course. The internet has not turned out to be a thing apart. Unpleasant aspects of the real world, such as taxes, censorship, crime and fraud are now features of the virtual world, too. Gamers who make real money selling swords, gold and other items in virtual game worlds may now find that the tax man wants to know about it. Designers of virtual objects in Second Life, an online virtual world, are resorting to real-world lawsuits in order to protect their intellectual property. And several countries have managed to impose physical borders on the internet to enforce local laws.

At the same time, however, some of the most exciting uses of the internet rely on coupling it with the real world. Social networking allows people to stay in touch with their friends online, and plan social activities in the real world. The distinction between online and offline chatter ceases to matter. Or consider Google Earth, which puts satellite images of the whole world on your desktop and allows users to link online data with specific physical locations. The next step is to call up information about your surroundings using mobile devices—something that is starting to become possible. Beyond that, “augmented reality” technology blends virtual objects seamlessly into views of the real world, making it possible to compare real buildings with their virtual blueprints, or tag real-world locations with virtual messages.

All these approaches treat the internet as an overlay or an adjunct to the physical world, not a separate space. Rather than seeing the real and virtual realms as distinct and conflicting, in short, it makes sense to see them as complementary and connected. The resulting fusion is not what the Utopians or the critics foresaw, but it suits the rest of us just fine.

“No age jokes tonight, all right?” quipped Sir Mick Jagger, the 73-year-old front man of the Rolling Stones, as he welcomed the crowds to Desert Trip Music Festival in California last October. The performers’ average age was just one year below Sir Mick’s, justifying his description of the event as “the Palm Springs Retirement Home for British Musicians”.

Globally, a combination of falling birth rates and increasing lifespans will increase the “old-age dependency ratio” from 13% in 2015 to 38% by the end of the century. To listen to the doomsayers, this could lead not just to labour shortages but to economic stagnation, asset-market meltdowns, huge fiscal strains and a dearth of innovation.

From the start of the 20th century survival rates in old age started to improve markedly, a trend that continues today. The UN estimates that between 2010 and 2050 the number of over-85s globally will grow twice as much as that of the over-65s, and 16 times as much as that of everyone else.

Warnings about a “silver time bomb” or “grey tsunami” have been sounding for the past couple of decades, and have often been couched in terms of impending financial disaster and intergenerational warfare. Barring a rise in productivity on a wholly unlikely scale, it is economically unsustainable to pay out generous pensions for 30 years or more to people who may have been contributing to such schemes only for a similar amount of time. But this special report will argue that the longer, healthier lives that people in the rich world now enjoy can be aboon, not just for the individuals concerned but for the economies and societies they are part of. The key to unlocking this longevity dividend is to turn the over-65s into more active economic participants.

This starts with acknowledging that many of those older people today are not in fact “old” in the sense of being worn out, sick and inactive. Yet in most countries the age at which people retire has barely shifted over the past century. When Bismarck brought in the first formal pensions in the 1880s, payable from age 65, life expectancy in Prussia was 45.Today in the rich world 90% of the population live to celebrate their 65th birthday, mostly in good health, yet that date is still seen as the starting point of old age.

This year the peak cohort of American baby-boomers turns 60. As they approach retirement in unprecedented numbers, small tweaks to retirement ages and pensions will no longer be enough. This special report will argue that a radically different approach to ageing and life after 65 is needed.

The adage “like a kid at heart” may be truer than we think, since new research is showing that grown-ups are more immature than ever. Specifically, it seems a growing number of people are retaining the behaviors and attitudes associated with youth. As a consequence, many older people simply never achieve mental adulthood, according to a leading expert on evolutionary psychiatry. Among scientists, the phenomenon is called psychological neoteny.

The theory’s creator is Bruce Charlton, a professor in the School of Biology at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, England. Charlton explained that humans have an inherent attraction to physical youth, since it can be a sign of fertility, health and vitality. In the mid-20th century, however, another force kicked in, due to increasing need for individuals to change jobs, learn new skills, move to new places and make new friends. A child-like flexibility of attitudes, behaviors and knowledge is probably adaptive to the increased instability of the modern world. Formal education now extends well past physical maturity, leaving students with minds that are, he said, “unfinished”. When formal education continues into the early twenties, it probably, to an extent, counteracts the attainment of psychological maturity, which would otherwise occur at about this age.

Charlton pointed out the past cultures often marked the advent of adulthood with initiation ceremonies. While the human mind responds to new information over the course of any individual’s lifetime, Charlton argues that past physical environments were more stable and allowed for a state of psychological maturity. In hunter-gatherer societies, that maturity was probably achieved during a person’s late teens or early twenties. By contrast, many modern adults fail to attain this maturity, and such failure is common and indeed characteristic of highly educated and, on the whole, effective and socially valuable people. People such as academics, teachers, scientists and many other professionals are often strikingly immature outside of their strictly specialist competence in the sense of being unpredictable, unbalanced in priorities, and tending to overreact.

Charlton added that since modern cultures now favor cognitive flexibility, “immature” people tend to thrive and succeed, and have set the tone not only for contemporary life, but also for the future, when it is possible our genes may even change as a result of the psychological shift. The faults of youth are retained along with the virtues, he believes. These include short attention span, sensation and novelty-seeking, short cycles of arbitrary fashion and a sense of cultural shallowness. At least youthfulness is no longer restricted to youth, he said, due to overall improvements in food and healthcare, along with cosmetic technologies.

David Brooks, a social commentator and a columnist at The New York Times, has documented a somewhat related phenomenon concerning the current blurring of the bourgeois world of capitalism and the bohemian counterculture, which Charlton believes is a version of psychological neoteny. Brooks believes such individuals have lost the wisdom and maturity of their bourgeois predecessors due to more emphasis placed on expertise, flexibility and vitality.

In an old factory building in lower Manhattan a fintech startup is seeking answers to a question that has tormented teachers and students for decades: What is the value of a given course, teacher or institution? Climb Credit, with just two dozen employees, provides student loans. The programs it finances bring returns far higher than can be expected from even highly rated universities.

Climb does not claim to nurture billionaires, nor to care much about any of the intangible benefits of education. Rather, it focuses on sharp, quantifiable increases in earnings. The average size of its loans is $10,000 and it normally finances programs of less than a year. Some students have scant formal education; others advanced degrees. The rate of return they get is calculated as the uplift in earnings after the course of study, minus its cost.

Climb’s results so far are hardly conclusive. It has released only the number of loan applications: just 10,000 since its founding in 2014. Many institutions it works with do not offer the four-year and two-year courses eligible for federal funding, which account for 19m students. Instead, its market for now is among the 5m studying in more focused programs.

Climb tracks every loan it makes, along with data such as subject area, teacher, institution, job offers and salaries. Its interest rates average 9% a year, roughly double the government rate, and can be as high as 15%. It shuns some fields, such as acting or modelling, altogether, if there is no evidence that a course delivers a return. So far, the firm’s approach has worked: Its default rates are in the low single digits.

Climb’s credit offering covers 70 institutions; another 150 are being vetted. As many as 3,000 may eventually qualify. Climb’s attraction is obvious: an expanded student base. But many willbalk atthe tough provisions Climb imposes. Students must be given a drop-out period, when they can leave without any loan obligation. A review of data on conventional student loans suggested that those most likely to default had begun classes, taken on debt and then quit the course before they had acquired any new skills. If a student does default, the school is usually responsible for more than 20% of the unpaid debt. That gives it an incentive to pick students carefully and train them well.

In conventional student loans, interest and principal accumulate silently. On graduation, the monthly repayment bill comes as a shock. Climb students start making tiny payments as soon as they take out a loan (refunded if they drop out fast). Climb hopes to make its success-rate data public, to help both students and lenders. It already makes good use of its network of education providers: it has hired three former students from institutions within it.

[A] Dullness and loneliness lead to American’s hospitality

[B] Harshness of frontier contributes to the tradition of hospitality

[C] Hospitality of Americans to the visitors is a common observation

[D] Charitable organizations in America

[E] Culture implications help understand Americans’ hospitality

[F] Impression on Canadians

[G] Proper interpretation of the American’s hospitality

【G1】____________________

A report consistently brought back by visitors to the US is how friendly, courteous, and helpful most Americans were to them. To be fair, this observation is also frequently made of Canada and Canadians, and should best be considered North American. There are, of course, exceptions. Small-minded officials, rude waiters, and ill-mannered taxi drivers are hardly unknown in the U.S. Yet it is an observation made so frequently that it deserves comment.

【G2】____________________

For a long period of time and in many parts of the country, a traveler was a welcome break in an otherwise dull existence. Dullness and loneliness were common problems of the families who generally lived distant from one another. Strangers and travelers were welcome sources of diversion, and brought news of the outside world.

【G3】____________________

The harsh realities of the frontier also shaped this tradition of hospitality. Someone traveling alone, if hungry, injured, or ill, often had nowhere to turn except to the nearest cabin or settlement. It was not a matter of choice for the traveler or merely a charitable impulse on the part of the settlers. It reflected the harshness of daily life: if you didn’t take in the stranger and take care of him, there was no one else who would. And someday, remember, you might be in the same situation.

【G4】____________________

Today there are many charitable organizations which specialize in helping the weary traveler. Yet, the old tradition of hospitality to strangers is still very strong in the U.S., especially in the smaller cities and towns away from the busy tourist trails. “I was just traveling through, got talking with this American, and pretty soon he invited me home for dinner-—amazing.” Such observations reported by visitors to the U.S. are not uncommon, but are not always understood properly. The casual friendliness of many Americans should be interpreted neither as superficial nor as artificial, but as the result of a historically developed cultural tradition.

【G5】____________________

As is true of any developed society, in America a complex set of cultural signals, assumptions, and conventions underlies all social interrelationships. And, of course, speaking a language does not necessarily mean that someone understands its social and cultural patterns. Visitors who fail to “translate” cultural meanings properly often draw wrong conclusions. For example, when an American uses the word “friend”, the cultural implications of the word may be quite different from those it has in the visitor’s language and culture. It takes more than a brief encounter on a bus to distinguish between courteous convention and individual interest. Yet, being friendly is a virtue that many Americans value highly and expect from both neighbors and strangers.

It is hard to predict how science is going to turn out, and if it is really good science it is impossible to predict. If the things to be found are actually new, they are by definition unknown in advance. You cannot make choice in this matter.【T1】You either have science or you don’t and if you have it you are obliged to accept the surprising and disturbing pieces of information, along with the neat and promptly useful bits.

【T2】The only solid piece of scientific truth about which I feel totally confident is that we are profoundly ignorant about nature. Indeed. I regard this as the major discovery of the past hundred years of biology. It is, in its way, an illumination piece of news. It would have amazed the brightest minds of the 18th century Enlightenment to be told by any of us how little we know and how bewildering seems the way ahead.【T3】It is this sudden confrontation with the depth and scope of ignorance that represents the most significant contribution of the 20th century science to the human intellect. In earlier times, we either pretended to understand how things worked or ignored the problem, or simply made up stories to fill the gaps.【T4】Now that we have begun exploring in earnest, we are getting glimpses of how huge the questions are, and how far from being answered. Because of this, we are depressed. It is not so bad being ignorant if you are depressed. It is not so bad being ignorant if you are totally ignorant; the hard thing is knowing in some detail the reality of ignorance, the worst spots and here and there the not-so-bad spots, but no true light at the end of the tunnel nor even any tunnels that can be trusted.

But we are making a beginning, and there ought to be some satisfaction. There are probably no questions we can think up that can’t be answered, sooner or later, including even the matter of consciousness.【T5】To be sure, there may well be questions we can’t think up, ever, and therefore limits to the reach of human intellect, but that is another matter. Within our limits, we should be able to work our way through to all our answers, if we keep at it long enough, and pay attention.