By day, Robert Titterton is a lawyer. In his spare though he goes on stage beside pianist Maria Raspopova — not as a musician but as her page turner. "I'm not a trained musician, but I've learnt to read music so I can help Maria in her performance."

Mr Titterton is chairman of the Omega Ensemble but has been the group's official page turner for the past four years. His job is to sit beside the pianist and turn the pages of the score so the musician doesn't have to break the flow of sound by doing it themselves. He said he became just as nervous as those playing instruments on stage.

"A lot of skills are needed for the job. You have to make sure you don't turn two pages at once and make sure you find the repeats in the music  when you have to go back to the right spot." Mr Titterton explained.

Being a page turner requires plenty of practice. Some pieces of music can go for 40 minutes and require up to 50 page turns, including back turns for repeat passages. Silent onstage communication is key, and each pianist has their own style of "nodding" to indicate a page turn which they need to practise with their page turner.

But like all performances, there are moments when things go wrong. "I was turning the page to get ready for the next page, but the draft wind from the turn caused the spare pages to fall off the stand," Mr Titterton said, "Luckily I was able to catch them and put them back."

Most page turners are piano students or up-and-coming concert pianists, although Ms Raspopova has once asked her husband to  help her out on stage.

"My husband is the worst page turner," she laughed. "He's interested in the music, feeling every note, and I have to say: 'Turn, turn!' "Robert is the best page turner I've had in my entire life."

The benefits of regular exercise are well documented but there's a new bonus to add to the ever-growing list. New researchers found that middle-aged women who were physically fit could be nearly 90 percent less likely to develop dementia (失智症) in later life and is they did, it came on a decade later than less sporty women.

Lead researcher Dr. Helena Horder, of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, said: "These findings are exciting because it's possible that improving people's cardiovascular (心血管的) fitness in middle age could delay or even prevent them from developing dementia."

For the study, 191 women with an average age of 50 took a bicycle exercise test until they were exhausted to measure their peak (最大值的) cardiovascular capacity. The average peak workload was measured at 103 watts. A total of 40 women met the criteria for a high fitness level, or 120 watts or higher.

A total of 92 women were in the medium fitness category: and 59 women were in the low fitness category, defined as a peak workload of 80 watts or less, or having their exercise tests stopped because of high blood pressure, chest pain or other cardiovascular problems.

These women were then tested for dementia six times over the following four decades. During that time, 44 of the women developed dementia. Five percent of the highly fit women developed dementia, compared to 25 percent of the women with medium fitness and 32 percent of the women with low fitness

"However, this study does not show cause and effect between cardiovascular fitness and dementia it only shows an association. More research is needed to see if improved fitness could have a positive effect on the risk of dementia and also to look at when during a lifetime a high fitness level is most important" She also admitted that a relatively small number of women were studied, all of whom were form Sweden so the results might not be applicable to other groups.

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.