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One of the more prevalent memes in modern day life is that digital technology — like round-the-clock email and friends’ envy-inducing Instagram photos — is stressing us out and making us unhealthy. Now Claire Cain Miller reports at the NYT that a recent study has found the opposite: Frequent Internet and social media users do not have higher stress levels than those who use technology less often. “The fear of missing out and jealousy of high-living friends with better vacations and happier kids than everybody else turned out to be not true,” says Lee Rainie.

The survey of 1,801 adults asked participants about the extent to which they felt their lives were stressful, using an established scale of stress called the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS). One unexpected result of the study is that women who frequently use Twitter, email and photo-sharing apps scored 21 percent lower on the stress scale than those who did not. That could be because sharing life events enhances well-being, social scientists say, and women tend to do it more than men both online and off. Technology seems to provide “a low-demand and easily accessible coping mechanism that is not experienced or taken advantage of by men,” the report said. "Just as the telephone made it easier to maintain in-person relationships but neither replaced nor ruined them," concludes Miller, "this recent research suggests that digital technology can become a tool to augment the relationships humans already have."

The death of the mainframe has been predicted many times over the years but it has prevailed because it has been overhauled time and again. Now Steve Lohr reports that IBM has just released the z13, a new mainframe engineered to cope with the huge volume of data and transactions generated by people using smartphones and tablets. “This is a mainframe for the mobile digital economy,” says Tom Rosamilia. “It’s a computer for the bow wave of mobile transactions coming our way.” IBM claims the z13 mainframe is the first system able to process 2.5 billion transactions a day and has a host of technical improvements over its predecessor, including three times the memory, faster processing and greater data-handling capability. IBM spent $1 billion to develop the z13, and that research generated 500 new patents, including some for encryption intended to improve the security of mobile computing. Much of the new technology is designed for real-time analysis in business. For example, the mainframe system can allow automated fraud prevention while a purchase is being made on a smartphone. Another example would be providing shoppers with personalized offers while they are in a store, by tracking their locations and tapping data on their preferences, mainly from their previous buying patterns at that retailer.

IBM brings out a new mainframe about every three years, and the success of this one is critical to the company’s business. Mainframes alone account for only about 3 percent of IBM’s sales. But when mainframe-related software, services and storage are included, the business as a whole contributes 25 percent of IBM’s revenue and 35 percent of its operating profit. Ronald J. Peri, chief executive of Radixx International was an early advocate in the 1980s of moving off mainframes and onto networks of personal computers. Today Peri is shifting the back-end computing engine in the Radixx data center from a cluster of industry-standard servers to a new IBM mainframe and estimates the total cost of ownership including hardware, software and labor will be 50 percent less with a mainframe. “We kind of rediscovered the mainframe,” says Peri.

Reuters reports that Elon Musk, speaking at an industry conference in Detroit, said Tesla may not be profitable until 2020 but that Tesla plans to boost production of electric cars to "at least a few million a year" by 2025. Musk told attendees at the Automotive News World Congress that "we could make money now if we weren't investing" in new technology and vehicles such as the Model 3 and expanded retail networks.

Musk does not see the Chevrolet Bolt as a potential competitor to the Model 3. "It's not going to affect us if someone builds a few hundred thousand vehicles," said Musk. "I'd be pleased to see other manufacturers make electric cars." On another topic, Musk said he was open to partnerships with retailers to sell Tesla vehicles, but not until after the company no longer has production bottlenecks. "Before considering taking on franchised dealers, we also have to establish (more of) our own stores," said Musk adding that "we will consider" franchising "if we find the right partner." Musk did not elaborate, but said Tesla "is not actively seeking any partnerships" with other manufacturers "because our focus is so heavily on improving our production" in Fremont. Last year, Tesla delivered about 33,000 Model S sedans and said the current wait for delivery is one to four months. Tesla has already presold every Model S that it plans to build in 2015. “If you ordered a car today, you wouldn’t get it until 2016."

David Barboza has an interesting article in the NYT about China's engineering megaprojects like the world’s longest underwater tunnel that will run twice the length of the one under the English Channel, and bore deep into one of Asia’s active earthquake zones, creating a rail link between two northern port cities, Dalian and Yantai. Throughout China, equally ambitious projects with multibillion-dollar price tags are already underway. The world’s largest bridge. The biggest airport. The longest gas pipeline. Such enormous infrastructure projects are a Chinese tradition. From the Great Wall to the Grand Canal and the Three Gorges Dam, this nation for centuries has used colossal public-works projects to showcase its engineering prowess and project its economic might. In November, for example, the powerful National Development and Reform Commission approved plans to spend nearly $115 billion on 21 supersize infrastructure projects, including new airports and high-speed rail lines. “Clearly, China’s cost advantages are going to shrink somewhat over the longer-term and prices for projects are only going to rise," says Victor Chuan Chen. "I think the government has done an admirable job in getting many of these projects off the ground while the economics were still very favorable.” China is pushing the boundaries of infrastructure-building, with ever bolder proposals. The Dalian tunnel looks small compared with the latest idea to build an “international railway” that would link China to the United States by burrowing under the Bering Strait and creating a tunnel between Russia and Alaska.

But whether China really needs this much big infrastructure — or can even afford it — is a contentious issue. Some economists worry that China might eventually be mired in enormous debt (PDF) and many experts say such projects also exact a heavy toll on local communities and the environment, as builders displace people, clear forests, reroute rivers and erect dams. “It makes sense to accelerate infrastructure spending during a downturn, when capital and labor are underemployed,” says David Dollar. But “if the growth rate is propped up through building unnecessary infrastructure, eventually there could be a sharp slowdown that reveals that the infrastructure was really not needed at all.”

The Guardian has an interesting article on the current quest sweeping Silicon Valley to disrupt death and the $1m prize challenging scientists to “hack the code of life” and push human lifespan past its apparent maximum of about 120 years. Hedge Fund Manager Joon Yun's Palo Alto Longevity Prize, which 15 scientific teams have so far entered, will be awarded in the first instance for restoring vitality and extending lifespan in mice by 50%:

Billionaires and companies are bullish about what they can achieve. In September 2013 Google announced the creation of Calico, short for the California Life Company. Its mission is to reverse engineer the biology that controls lifespan and “devise interventions that enable people to lead longer and healthier lives”. Though much mystery surrounds the new biotech company, it seems to be looking in part to develop age-defying drugs. In April 2014 it recruited Cynthia Kenyon, a scientist acclaimed for work that included genetically engineering roundworms to live up to six times longer than normal, and who has spoken of dreaming of applying her discoveries to people. “Calico has the money to do almost anything it wants,” says Tom Johnson, an earlier pioneer of the field now at the University of Colorado who was the first to find a genetic effect on longevity in a worm.

Why might tech zillionaires choose to fund life extension research? Three reasons reckons Patrick McCray, a historian of modern technology at the University of California, Santa Barbara. First, if you had that much money wouldn’t you want to live longer to enjoy it? Then there is money to be made in them there hills. But last, and what he thinks is the heart of the matter, is ideology. If your business and social world is oriented around the premise of “disruptive technologies”, what could be more disruptive than slowing down or “defeating” ageing? “Coupled to this is the idea that if you have made your billions in an industrial sector that is based on precise careful control of 0s and 1s, why not imagine you could extend this to the control of atoms and molecules?,” he says.

Anna North writes in the NYT that self-control, curiosity, and “grit” may seem more personal than academic, but at some schools, they’re now part of the regular curriculum. Some researchers say personality could be even more important than intelligence when it comes to students’ success in school. “We probably need to start rethinking our emphasis on intelligence,” says Arthur E. Poropat citing research that shows that both conscientiousness and openness are more highly correlated with student performance than intelligence. “This isn’t to say that we should throw intelligence out, but we need to pull back on thinking that this is the only game in town.” The KIPP network of charter schools emphasizes grit along with six other “character strengths,” including self-control and curiosity. “We talk a lot about them as being skills or strengths, not necessarily traits, because it’s not innate," says Leyla Bravo-Willey. “If a child happens to be very gritty but has trouble participating in class, we still want them to develop that part of themselves.”

But the focus on character has encountered criticism. “To begin with, not everything is worth doing, let alone doing for extended periods, and not everyone who works hard is pursuing something worthwhile” says Alfie Kohn. "On closer inspection, the concept of grit turns out to be dubious, as does the evidence cited to support it. Persistence can actually backfire and distract from more important goals." There’s other evidence that grit isn’t always desirable. Gritty people sometimes exhibit what psychologists call “nonproductive persistence”: They try, try again, says Dean MacFarlin though the result may be either unremitting failure or “a costly or inefficient success that could have been easily surpassed by alternative courses of action,”

Lily Hay Newman reports that the LAPD has ordered 3,000 Tasers that, when discharged, will automatically activate cameras on officers' uniforms, which will create visual records of incidents at a time of mounting concern about excessive force by U.S. law enforcement officers. The new digital Taser X26P weapons record the date, time and duration of firing, and whether Taser wires actually strike suspects and how long the thousands of volts of electricity pulse through them. “This technology gives a much better picture of what happens in the field,” says Steve Tuttle. The idea of using a Taser discharge as a criterion for activating body cams is promising, especially as more and more police departments adopt body cams and struggle to establish guidelines for when they should be on or off. Police leadership—i.e., chiefs and upper management—is far more supportive of the technology and tends to view body-worn cameras as a tool for increasing accountability and reducing civil liability. On the other hand, the patrol officer culture is concerned that the technology will be an unfair intrusion into their routine activities—for instance, it might invite over-managing minor policy violations. "In addition to these new Taser deployments, we plan to issue a body-worn camera and a Taser device to every officer," says Police Chief Charlie Beck. "It is our goal to make these important tools available to every front line officer over the next few years."

Drug resistant strains of many diseases are emerging faster than new antibiotics can be made to fight them with drug-resistant bacteria infecting at least two million people a year in the United States and killing 23,000. Now Denise Grady reports at the NYT that scientists have developed a new method, which extracts drugs from bacteria that live in dirt, that has yielded a powerful new antibiotic, teixobactin, that was tested in mice and easily cured severe infections, with no side effects. Better still, the drug works in a way that makes it very unlikely that bacteria will become resistant to it. And the method developed to produce the drug has the potential to unlock a trove of natural compounds to fight infections and cancer — molecules that were previously beyond scientists’ reach because the microbes that produce them could not be grown in the laboratory.

The new research is based on the premise that everything on earth — plants, soil, people, animals — is teeming with microbes that compete fiercely to survive. Trying to keep one another in check, the microbes secrete biological weapons: antibiotics. “The way bacteria multiply, if there weren’t natural mechanisms to limit their growth, they would have covered the planet and eaten us all eons ago,” says Dr. William Schaffner. The problem is that about 99 percent of the microbial species in the environment are bacteria that do not grow under usual laboratory conditions (PDF). But the researchers have found a way to grow them using a process that involves diluting a soil sample and placing it on specialized equipment. Then, the secret to success is putting the equipment into a box full of the same soil that the sample came from. “Essentially, we’re tricking the bacteria,” says Dr. Kim Lewis. Back in their native dirt, they divide and grow into colonies. Once the colonies form, the bacteria are “domesticated,” and researchers can scoop them up and start growing them in petri dishes in the laboratory.

Experts not involved with the research say the technique for isolating the drug had great potential. They also say teixobactin looked promising, but expressed caution because it has not yet been tested in humans. “What most excites me is the tantalizing prospect that this discovery is just the tip of the iceberg,” says Mark Woolhouse. “It may be that we will find more, perhaps many more, antibiotics using these latest techniques.”

Sara Stewart reports at the NY Post that the new sci-fi movie "Predestination," opening January 9, is "loopier than Speilberg's [Minority Report]; its plot twists and turns “like a snake eating its tail,” one character remarks, until you’re not sure whether its developments are even plausible in a fictional universe." Based on Robert A. Heinlein's science fiction classic "All You Zombies," and first published in 1959 - the story involves a number of paradoxes caused by time travel further developing themes explored by Heinlein in a previous work, "By His Bootstraps", published some 18 years earlier. The plot concerns the intersection of Ethan Hawke’s time-traveling assassin and an androgynous young writer who becomes a key player in the quest by Hawke (he’s only billed as The Barkeep) to catch a New York-based serial bomber. The story is the movie's long, set-up, a tale of a bullied childhood told by one who was bullied, a romantic rendezvous that may or may not happen, a single mother exploited by science and the debris, scattered through time, of every wound, ordeal and heartbreak that a single life has to endure writes Roger Moore. "Will "The Bartender" find his prey and prevent a tragedy? Will he be able to pull the trigger, one last time? Will "The Unmarried Mother" improve her lot or change her destiny?"

Chris Perez reports at the NY Post that the Lehe Ledu Wildlife Zoo in Chongqing city is giving people the hair-raising chance to learn what it’s like to come face to face with an apex predator. Visitors pay to be caged inside the back of a truck as it makes its way through the animal park. Just to make sure they get the attention of the beasts, huge chunks of raw meat are tied to the bars to lure them as close as possible. “We wanted to give our visitors the thrill of being stalked and attacked by the big cats but with, of course, none of the risks,” says Chan Liang. “The guests are warned to keep their fingers and hands inside the cage at all times because a hungry tiger wouldn’t know the difference between them and breakfast.” According to CNN the trips have been sold out for the next three months. “It’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced before in a zoo,” says Tao Jen. “We’re not looking at them, they’re looking at us — and we’re lunch.”