Popularization has in some cases changed the original meaning of emotional intelligence. Many people now misunderstand emotional intelligence as almost everything desirable in a person's makeup that cannot be measured by an IQ test, such as character, motivation, confidence, mental stability, optimism and “people skills.” Research has shown that emotional skills may contribute to some of these qualities, but most of them move far beyond skill-based emotional intelligence.

We prefer to describe emotional intelligence as a specific set of skills that can be used for either good or bad purposes. The ability to accurately understand how others are feeling may be used by a doctor to find how best to help her patients, while a cheater might use it to control potential victims. Being emotionally intelligent does not necessarily make one a moral person.

Although popular beliefs regarding emotional intelligence run far ahead of what research can reasonably support, the overall effects of the publicity have been more beneficial than harmful. The most positive aspect of this popularization is a new and much needed emphasis on emotion by employers, educators and others interested in promoting social well-being. The popularization of emotional intelligence has helped both the public and researchers re-evaluate the functionality of emotions and how they serve people adaptively in everyday life.

Although the continuing popular appeal of emotional intelligence is desirable, we hope that such attention will excite a greater interest in the scientific and scholarly study of emotion. It is our hope that in coming decades, advances in science will offer new perspectives ( 视角) from which to study how people manage their lives. Emotional intelligence, with its focus on both head and heart, may serve to point us in the right direction.

"What would the world be if there were no hunger?" It's a question that Professor Crystal would ask her students. They found it hard to answer, she wrote later, because imagining something that isn't part of real life—and learning how to make it real—is a rare skill. It is taught to artists and engineers, but much less often to scientists. Crystal set out to change that, and helped to create a global movement. The result一an approach known as systems thinking—is now seen as essential in meeting global challenges.

Systems thinking is crucial to achieving targets such as zero hunger and better nutrition because it requires considering the way in which food is produced, processed, delivered and consumed, and looking at how those things intersect (交叉) with human health, the environment, economics and society. According to systems thinking, changing the food system—or any other network- requires three things to happen. First, researchers need to identify all the players in that system, second, they must work out how they relate to each other, and third, they need to understand and quantify the impact of those relationships on each other and on those outside the system.

Take nutrition. In the latest UN report on global food security, the number of undernourished (营养不良) people in the world has been rising, despite great advances in nutrition science. Tracking of 150 biochemicals in food has been important in revealing the relationships between calories, sugar, fat and the occurrence of common diseases. But using machine learning and artificial intelligence, some scientists propose that human diets consist of at least 26,000 biochemicals—and that the vast majority are not known. This shows that we have some way to travel before achieving the first objective of systems t hinking - which,in this example, is to identify more constituent parts of the nutrition system.

A systems approach to creating change is also built on the assumption that everyone in the system has equal power. But as some researchers find, the food system is not an equal one. A good way to redress (修正) such power imbalance is for more universities to do what Crystal did and teach students how to think using a systems approach.

More researchers, policymakers and representatives from the food industry must learn to look beyond their direct lines of responsibility and adopt a systems approach. Crystal knew that visions alone don't produce results, but concluded that "we'll never produce results that we can't envision".

We live in a town with three beaches. There are two parks less than 10 minutes' walk from home where neighbourhood children gather to play. However, what my children want to do after school is pick up a screen — any screen — and stare at it for hours. They are not alone. Today's children spend an average of four and a half hours a day looking at screens, split between watching television and using the Internet.

In the past few years, an increasing number of people and organisations have begun coming up with plans to counter this trend. A couple of years ago, film-maker David Bond realised that his children, then aged five and three, were attached to screens to the point where he was able to say "chocolate" into his three-year-old son's ear without getting a response. He realised that something needed to change, and, being a London media type, appointed himself "marketing director for Nature". He documented his journey as he set about treating nature as a brand to be marketed to young people. The result was Project Wild Thing, a film which charts the birth of the Wild Network a group of organisations with the common goal of getting children out into nature.

"Just five more minutes outdoors can make a difference," David Bond says. "There is a lot of really interesting evidence which seems to be suggesting that if children are inspired up to the age of seven, then being outdoors will be a habit for life." His own children have got into the habit of playing outside now: "We just send them out into the garden and tell them not to come back in for a while."

Summer is upon us. There is an amazing world out there, and it needs our children as much as they need it. Let us get them out and let them play.