A Chinese-born former Coca-Cola chemist has been sentenced to 14 years in prison in the US for stealing trade secrets for China. A Tennessee federal jury found You Xiaorong guilty of trade secret theft, wire fraud, economic espionage and other charges related to the manufacture of coatings inside drink cans that are made without the use of bisphenol-A (BPA). You allegedly stole the trade secrets to start her own BPA-free coating company in China. But prosecutors said she intended to aid the Chinese government. Stealing technology isn’t just a crime against a company. It is also a crime against American workers whose jobs and livelihoods are impacted. Last year, You was convicted in a 13-day jury trial. As the evidence at trial showed, the defendant stole valuable trade secrets and intended to use them to benefit not only a foreign company, but also the government of China.

        According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, You stole valuable trade secrets related to formulations for BPA-free coatings for the inside of beverage cans. BPA was once commonly used to coat the inside of cans and other food and beverage containers to help minimise flavour loss and prevent the container from corroding or reacting with the food or beverage in it. However, due to BPA’s potential health risks, companies began searching for BPA-free alternatives. You was granted access to the BPA-free compound trade secrets while working at Coca-Cola in Atlanta and Eastman Chemical Company in Kingsport, Tennessee. The stolen trade secrets were the intellectual property of major chemical and coating companies and cost nearly $120 million to develop. You stole the trade secrets to set up a new BPA-free coating company in China. You and her Chinese corporate partner, Weihai Jinhong Group, received millions of dollars in Chinese government grants to support the new company. You was a recipient of grants in China’s Thousand Talents. Prosecutors said she intended to benefit not only Weihai Jinhong Group, but also the governments of China, Shandong province, and Weihai city.

        For a long time, many psychologists embraced a victim narrative about trauma, believing that severe stress causes long-lasting and perhaps irreparable damage to one's psyche and health. In 1980, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was added to the list of mental disorders and has since received a lot of attention in the media and among ordinary individuals trying to understand what happens to people in the wake of tragic life events. Yet psychologists now know that only a small percentage of people develop the full-blown disorder while, on average, anywhere from one half to two-thirds of trauma survivors exhibit what's known as post-traumatic growth. After a crisis, most people acquire a newfound sense of purpose, develop deeper relationships, have a greater appreciation of life, and report other benefits.

       In American culture, when people are feeling depressed or anxious, they are often advised to do what makes them happy； they are encouraged to distract themselves from bad news and difficult feelings, to limit their time on social media and to exercise. However, the happy feelings one gets by doing pleasant things fade fast, and soon the sad mood takes over, plunging one into a deeper abyss of melancholy. A better strategy to cope with trauma has to do with meaning-seeking. When people search for meaning, they often do not feel happy, because the things that make our lives meaningful, like volunteering or working, are stressful and require effort. But months later, the meaning seekers not only reported fewer negative moods but also felt more enriched, inspired and part of something greater than themselves. Therefore, although none of us can avoid suffering, we can still learn to suffer well.

       Ocean waves represent our planet’s last untapped large-scale renewable energy resource. Over 70 % of the earth’s surface is covered with water. The energy contained within waves has the potential to produce up to 80,000 TWh (10¹² watt-hours) of electricity per year—sufficient to meet our global energy demand five times over.

       No wonder the idea of extracting energy from ocean waves and turning it into electricity is an alluring one. The first serious attempt to do so dates back to 1974, when Stephen Salter of Edinburgh University came up with the idea of “ducks”: house-sized buoys tethered to the sea floor that would convert the swell into rotational motion to drive generators. It failed, as have many subsequent efforts to perform the trick. But the idea of wave power will not go away, and the latest attempt—the brainchild of researchers at Oscilla Power, a firm based in Seattle—is trying to address head-on the reason why previous efforts have foundered.

       This reason, according to Rahul Shendure, the firm’s boss, is that those efforts took technologies developed for landlubbers (often as components of wind turbines) and tried to modify them for marine use. The consequence was kit too complicated and sensitive for the rough-and-tumble of life on the ocean waves, and also too vulnerable to corrosion. Better, he reckons, to start from scratch.

       Instead of generators with lots of moving parts, Oscilla is developing ones that barely move at all. These employ a little-explored phenomenon called magnetostriction, in which ferromagnetic materials (things like iron, which can be magnetized strongly) change their shape slightly in the presence of a magnetic field. Like many physical processes, this also works in reverse. Apply stresses or strains to such a material and its magnetic characteristics alter. Do this in the presence of permanent magnets and a coil of wire, such as are found in conventional generators, and it will generate electricity.