Scientists Have Unlocked the Secret of Great Chocolate --- Using the right microbes to ferment cocoa beans is the key to flavor.

“What's the secret to the best-tasting chocolate?

 

It is using the right microbes, and for the first time scientists have isolated a collection of those bugs and made a superior-tasting chocolate in a laboratory.

 

Chocolate, like sourdough or yogurt, begins with fermentation. Farmers stash cocoa beans scooped out of ripe cocoa pods in wooden boxes outdoors, cover them with leaves and leave them alone for a week. Fermentation is kicked off by bacteria and yeasts that live in the boxes or the soil.

 

If things go well, the beans and slimy white pulp that surrounds them will transform into brown beans that can be dried, roasted and cracked open. The flavorful nibs within are turned into chocolate liquor, the foundation for confections and baking chocolate.

 

Working with three farms in Colombia, researchers at the University of Nottingham collected samples of farm-fermented beans multiple times during the weeklong process. The South American nation is a major exporter of fine-flavor cocoa -- the kind used in more expensive chocolate.

 

Through a genetic analysis, the scientists zeroed in on microbes that were present throughout fermentation. They narrowed the list to those able to produce chemicals found in fully-fermented chocolate, and used a starter culture made of nine species to ferment beans in the lab.

 

"Lo and behold, they tasted like fine-flavor cocoa," said David Salt, a plant molecular biologist and emeritus professor at the University of Nottingham who was part of the research team.

 

Fine-flavor cocoa has fruity, caramel and floral notes that taste more complex than "bulk cocoa" grown in countries such as Ghana, according to the International Cocoa Organization.

 

A panel of taste experts at the Cocoa Research Center in Trinidad and Tobago scored the chocolate liquor made with the lab-fermented beans and determined that the cultures from two farms had floral and fruity flavors similar to fine-flavor varieties found in Madagascar.

 

Chocolate owes its taste in part to its terroir -- the particular natural environment it is grown in, such as its soil -- and other labs have shown how cocoa products from different locations have different collections of microbes on them. But this is the first time key microbes have been isolated and had their role reproduced.

 

"No one has so far reverse engineered it and gotten a successful starter culture," said Pablo Cruz-Morales, a biochemical engineer at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Biosustainability at the Technical University of Denmark, who wasn't involved with the work.

 

The breakthrough, which the researchers described in the journal Nature Microbiology this month, could help farmers standardize the natural fermentation process.

 

But Cruz-Morales would just like to taste the chocolate. "I wish they had sent a little sample," he said.” [1]

 

1. REVIEW --- Science Shorts: Scientists Have Unlocked the Secret of Great Chocolate --- Using the right microbes to ferment cocoa beans is the key to flavor. Subbaraman, Nidhi.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 30 Aug 2025: C4. 

Mokslininkai atskleidė puikaus šokolado paslaptį --- Tinkamų mikrobų naudojimas kakavos pupelėms fermentuoti yra raktas į skonį.

 

„Kokia yra geriausio skonio šokolado paslaptis?

 

Tai susiję su tinkamų mikrobų naudojimu, ir pirmą kartą mokslininkai išskyrė šių bakterijų kolekciją ir laboratorijoje pagamino išskirtinio skonio šokoladą.

 

Šokoladas, kaip ir duonos raugas ar jogurtas, prasideda nuo fermentacijos. Ūkininkai kakavos pupeles, išskobtas iš prinokusių ankščių, laiko medinėse dėžėse lauke, uždengia jas lapais ir palieka ramybėje savaitei. Fermentaciją pradeda bakterijos ir mielės, gyvenančios dėžėse arba dirvožemyje.

 

Jei viskas klostysis gerai, pupelės ir jas supantis gleivėtas baltas minkštimas virs rudomis pupelėmis, kurias galima džiovinti, skrudinti ir perlaužti. Skanūs pupelių rutuliukai viduje virsta šokolado likeriu – konditerijos gaminių ir kepimo šokolado pagrindu.

 

Notingemo universiteto mokslininkai, bendradarbiaudami su trimis ūkiais Kolumbijoje, per savaitę trukusį procesą kelis kartus rinko ūkiuose fermentuotų pupelių mėginius. Pietų Amerikos šalis yra pagrindinė puikaus skonio kakavos – tokios, kuri naudojama brangesniame šokolade – eksportuotoja.

 

Atlikdami genetinę analizę, mokslininkai sutelkė dėmesį į mikrobus, kurie buvo aptinkami visos fermentacijos metu. Jie susiaurino sąrašą iki tų, kurie gali gaminti chemines medžiagas, randamas visiškai fermentuotame šokolade, ir laboratorijoje pupelėms fermentuoti naudojo iš devynių rūšių pagamintą raugo kultūrą.

 

„Galų gale, jos buvo, kaip puikaus skonio kakava“, – sakė Davidas Saltas, augalų molekulinės biologijos specialistas ir Notingemo universiteto emeritas profesorius, kuris buvo tyrimų komandos narys.

 

Pasak Tarptautinės kakavos organizacijos, puikaus skonio kakava turi vaisių, karamelės ir gėlių natas, kurios yra sudėtingesnės, nei „birios kakavos“, auginamos tokiose šalyse, kaip Gana.

 

Trinidado ir Tobago Kakavos tyrimų centro skonio ekspertų grupė įvertino šokolado likerį, pagamintą iš laboratorijoje fermentuotų pupelių, ir nustatė, kad kultūros iš dviejų ūkių turėjo gėlių ir vaisių skonius, panašius į puikaus skonio veisles, randamas Madagaskare.

 

Šokoladas savo skonį iš dalies lemia jo terroaras – ypatinga gamtinė aplinka, kurioje jis auginamas, pavyzdžiui, dirvožemis – o kitos laboratorijos parodė, kaip kakavos produktai iš skirtingų vietų turi skirtingas mikrobų kolekcijas. Tačiau tai pirmas kartas, kai pagrindiniai mikrobai buvo išskirti ir jų vaidmuo atsikartojo laboratorijoje.

 

„Niekam iki šiol nepavyko atlikti atvirkštinės inžinerijos ir gauti sėkmingą raugo kultūrą“, – teigė Pablo Cruz-Morales, biocheminis inžinierius iš Novo Nordisk fondo biologinio tvarumo centro Danijos technikos universitete, kuris nedalyvavo šiame darbe.

 

Šis proveržis, kurį tyrėjai aprašė šį mėnesį žurnale „Nature Microbiology“, galėtų padėti ūkininkams standartizuoti natūralų fermentacijos procesą.

 

Tačiau Cruz-Morales tiesiog norėtų paragauti šokolado. „Norėčiau, kad jie būtų atsiuntę nedidelį mėginį“, – sakė jis.“ [1]

 

1. REVIEW --- Science Shorts: Scientists Have Unlocked the Secret of Great Chocolate --- Using the right microbes to ferment cocoa beans is the key to flavor. Subbaraman, Nidhi.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 30 Aug 2025: C4. 

 

1. REVIEW --- Science Shorts: Scientists Have Unlocked the Secret of Great Chocolate --- Using the right microbes to ferment cocoa beans is the key to flavor. Subbaraman, Nidhi.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 30 Aug 2025: C4. 

Great Civilizations Depend on Trade --- When countries open up to the free exchange of goods and ideas, the result can be a historic golden age. But trade is rarely allowed to stay free for long.

“If you want to understand what makes great civilizations possible, consider a walk on Monte Testaccio in central Rome. This 115-foot hill is actually an artificial mound, made up of fragments of millions of clay amphorae. These once held olive oil imported from Spain, North Africa and the Middle East and were discarded here after the oil was decanted at a nearby port.

 

Monte Testaccio, "the hill of broken pottery," was built on international exchange. So was ancient Rome. The Greek orator Aristides claimed that to see all the products of the world, one had two choices: visit the entire world or simply go to Rome. "For whatever is grown and made among each people cannot fail to be here at all times and in abundance," he wrote, "so that the city appears a kind of common emporium of the world."

 

Visitors said almost exactly the same thing about other great civilizations of the past. A medieval observer described the Arab world during its golden age: "Everything produced from the earth is there. Carts carry countless goods to markets, where everything is available and cheap." In Hangzhou, once the capital of Song China, Marco Polo observed markets linked by canals and warehouses that "supply them with every article that could be desired."

 

Similarly, in the late 17th century, an English writer marveled at the Dutch Republic's prosperity. Its land, he wrote, produced "neither grain, wine, oil, timber, metal, stone, wool, hemp, pitch, nor almost any other commodity of use; and yet we find there is hardly a nation in the world which enjoys all these things in greater affluence; and all this from commerce alone."

 

Trade is not a byproduct of greatness but its foundation. Many civilizations have been centered on trade not because they had plenty of resources but because they didn't.

 

Ancient Athens had to rely on trade because its poor soil was not sufficient to feed the population. But the land could produce olive oil and wine, so Athenians developed extended trade links to export those goods and import grain from the Black Sea region.

 

Dutch farmers faced similar constraints: Much of their land was lost to the sea, so they specialized in livestock and traded for grain from the Baltics.

 

When the Song dynasty took over China in the late 10th century, the feudal system that gave aristocrats control of land and peasants in return for military service was breaking down. Instead of relying on forced labor, the rulers decided to pay workers. Since the Song court was dependent on tax revenue, it deregulated trade and actively encouraged commerce to maximize its income.

 

Specializing in trade made these civilizations some of the most prosperous in history. Athens's wealth enabled a deeper division of labor and the rise of professions like philosopher, historian, sculptor, architect, playwright and actor.

 

Song China was so successful that some economic historians have argued it came close to unleashing an industrial revolution 400 years before Britain did.

 

With ample resources, the Dutch fought for and won independence from Habsburg Spain, the world's most powerful empire, while also helping to launch the Enlightenment and create modern art. Foreigners were astonished to see that even ordinary Dutch homes displayed paintings.

 

Trade's most vital contribution was intellectual, giving these cultures access to ideas, methods and technologies they couldn't have developed alone. Constantly meeting foreigners with other experiences and ideas broadens one's horizon of what's possible.

 

The ancient Greek mindset, curious and adaptive, owes much to living amid hundreds of neighboring city-states with distinct cultures.

 

Renaissance Italy's creative explosion was fueled by trade with the Muslim world, where merchants learned about science, financial innovations and Hindu-Arabic numerals. Popes frequently condemned trade with infidels, but some Italians replied, "Trade should be free and unhindered, even into the gates of Hell."

 

But trade is rarely allowed to stay free for long. Governments often made a deliberate effort to restrict trade with foreigners, because the constant change and innovation trade brings can upset the status quo. Merchants could suddenly earn fortunes rivaling the landholding nobility, and strange ideas could undermine intellectual elites. Countries have always feared competition from foreigners, just as we do today.

 

Just as openness makes nations strong, isolation makes them fragile. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are war, plague, famine -- and trade barriers.

 

The late Roman Empire undermined its commercial economy through centralization, regulation and debasing the currency.

 

The late Abbasid caliphs militarized their economy in an effort to wrest control from the dominant merchants.

 

After facing tariffs from other countries, the Dutch eventually implemented their own.

 

The sharpest anti-globalization reversal came in China after the Ming dynasty seized power in 1368, promising to restore stability at any cost. Foreign trade was made punishable by death, and soon even coastal trade was banned. The world's greatest armada was allowed to rot in the harbor, and the Chinese court burned maps to prevent future voyages.

 

The result was stability indeed -- and centuries of stagnation. China went from the world's most advanced civilization to a poor one. By the 19th century, it was being attacked and humiliated by European powers that had become rulers of the seas.

 

It is heartbreaking to read the accounts of travelers who made it to Rome, Baghdad, Chinese port towns or Dutch cities just a few years too late, after repression and the loss of trade had ruined them. An Englishman visiting the Netherlands noted with surprise: "This trading nation must be in a very bad way. Most of their principal towns are sadly decayed." Likewise, a traveler to China's coastal cities observed: "Ever since the prohibition of maritime trade. . .all traces of past prosperity have disappeared."

 

The lesson is clear: Protectionism might seem like a shield, but it easily becomes a cage. It's a way of cutting a nation off from the world's brains and skills, forfeiting not just wealth but the energy and constant renewal that make civilizations shine. Then all that remains are the fading memories of golden ages -- and the broken shards of discarded amphorae.

 

---

 

This essay is adapted from Johan Norberg's new book, "Peak Human: What We Can Learn from the Rise and Fall of Golden Ages," which will be published on Sept. 2 by Atlantic Books.” [1]

 

1. REVIEW --- Great Civilizations Depend on Trade --- When countries open up to the free exchange of goods and ideas, the result can be a historic golden age. But trade is rarely allowed to stay free for long. Norberg, Johan.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 30 Aug 2025: C4. 

Didžiosios civilizacijos priklauso nuo prekybos --- Kai šalys atsiveria laisvai prekėms ir idėjoms, rezultatas gali būti istorinis aukso amžius. Tačiau prekyba retai kada išlieka laisva ilgam laikui.

„Jei norite suprasti, kas leido susiformuoti didžioms civilizacijoms, pagalvokite apie pasivaikščiojimą Monte Testaccio kalne centrinėje Romoje. Ši 34 metrų aukščio kalva iš tikrųjų yra dirbtinis piliakalnis, sudarytas iš milijonų molinių amforų fragmentų. Jose kadaise buvo laikomas iš Ispanijos, Šiaurės Afrikos ir Artimųjų Rytų importuotas alyvuogių aliejus, jos buvo išmestos čia po to, kai aliejus buvo perpiltas, netoliese esančiame, uoste.

 

Monte Testaccio, „sudaužytos keramikos kalva“, buvo pastatyta tarptautinių mainų pagrindu. Taip pat ir senovės Roma. Graikų oratorius Aristidas teigė, kad, norint pamatyti visus pasaulio produktus, reikia rinktis iš dviejų variantų: aplankyti visą pasaulį arba tiesiog nuvykti į Romą. „Nes viskas, kas auginama ir gaminama kiekvienoje tautoje, negali nebūti čia visada ir gausiai“, – rašė jis, – „todėl miestas atrodo savotiška bendra pasaulio parduotuvė.“

 

Lankytojai beveik tą patį sakė ir apie kitas didžiąsias praeities civilizacijas. Viduramžių stebėtojas apibūdino arabų pasaulį jo aukso amžiuje: „Viskas, kas pagaminta iš žemės, yra ten.“ „Vežimėliai gabena nesuskaičiuojamas prekes į turgus, kur viskas prieinama ir pigu.“ Hangdžou, kadaise buvusioje Song Kinijos sostine, Markas Polas pastebėjo turgus, sujungtus kanalais ir sandėliais, kurie „aprūpina juos visomis pageidaujamomis prekėmis“.

 

Panašiai XVII amžiaus pabaigoje vienas anglų rašytojas stebėjosi Nyderlandų Respublikos klestėjimu. Jis rašė, kad jos žemė „negamina nei grūdų, nei vyno, nei aliejaus, nei medienos, nei metalo, nei akmens, nei vilnos, nei kanapių, nei dervos, nei beveik jokių kitų vartojimo prekių; ir vis dėlto matome, kad vargu ar pasaulyje yra tauta, kuri visais šiais dalykais mėgautųsi taip gausiai; ir visa tai vien iš prekybos.“

 

Prekyba nėra didybės šalutinis produktas, o jos pagrindas. Daugelis civilizacijų buvo sutelktos į prekybą ne todėl, kad turėjo daug išteklių, o todėl, kad jų neturėjo.

 

Senovės Atėnai turėjo pasikliauti prekyba, nes skurdžios žemės nepakako gyventojams išmaitinti. Tačiau žemė galėjo gaminti alyvuogių aliejų ir vyną, todėl atėniečiai plėtojo plačius prekybos ryšius, kad galėtų eksportuoti šias prekes ir importuoti grūdus iš Juodosios jūros regiono.

 

Olandų ūkininkai susidūrė su panašiais apribojimais: didelę dalį jų žemės prarado jūrai, todėl jie specializavosi gyvulininkystėje ir prekiavo grūdais iš Baltijos šalių.

 

Kai X amžiaus pabaigoje Songų dinastija perėmė Kiniją, feodalinė sistema, suteikusi aristokratams žemės ir valstiečių kontrolę mainais už karinę tarnybą, griuvo. Užuot pasikliovę priverstiniu darbu, valdovai nusprendė mokėti darbuotojams. Kadangi Songų dvaras priklausė nuo mokesčių pajamų, jis dereguliavo prekybą ir aktyviai skatino prekybą, kad maksimaliai padidintų savo pajamas.

 

Specializacija prekyboje pavertė šias civilizacijas vienomis klestinčių istorijoje. Atėnų turtas leido giliau pasidalyti darbu ir atsirasti tokioms profesijoms, kaip filosofas, istorikas, skulptorius, architektas, dramaturgas ir aktorius.

 

Song Kinija buvo tokia sėkminga, kad kai kurie ekonomikos istorikai teigia, jog ji vos nesukėlė pramonės revoliucijos 400 metų anksčiau, nei Britanija.

 

Turėdami daug išteklių, olandai kovojo už ir iškovojo nepriklausomybę nuo Habsburgų Ispanijos, galingiausios pasaulyje imperijos, kartu padėdami pradėti Apšvietos amžių ir kurti modernųjį meną. Užsieniečiai buvo nustebinti pamatę, kad net paprastuose olandų namuose eksponuojami paveikslai.

 

Svarbiausias prekybos indėlis buvo intelektualinis, suteikiantis šioms kultūroms prieigą prie idėjų, metodų ir technologijų, kurių jos nebūtų galėjusios sukurti vienos. Nuolatinis susitikimas su užsieniečiais, turinčiais kitokios patirties ir idėjų, praplečia akiratį apie tai, kas įmanoma.

 

Senovės graikų mąstysena, smalsi ir prisitaikanti, daug skolinga gyvenimui tarp šimtų kaimyninių miestų-valstybių su skirtingomis kultūromis.

 

Renesanso Italijos kūrybinį sprogimą skatino prekyba su musulmonų pasauliu, kur pirkliai mokėsi apie mokslą, finansines inovacijas ir hinduistinius-arabiškus skaitmenis. Popiežiai dažnai smerkė prekybą su netikinčiaisiais, tačiau kai kurie italai atsakė: „Prekyba turėtų būti laisva ir netrukdoma, net per pragaro vartus.“

 

Tačiau prekyba retai kada ilgai išlieka laisva. Vyriausybės dažnai sąmoningai stengėsi apriboti prekybą su užsieniečiais, nes nuolatiniai pokyčiai ir inovacijos, kurias atneša prekyba, gali sutrikdyti status quo. Pirkliai galėjo staiga uždirbti turtus, prilygstančius žemvaldžių didikams, o keistos idėjos galėjo pakenkti intelektualiniam elitui. Šalys visada bijojo konkurencijos iš užsieniečių, kaip ir mes šiandien.

 

Kaip atvirumas stiprina tautas, taip izoliacija jas daro trapias. Keturi Apokalipsės raiteliai yra karas, maras, badas ir prekybos kliūtys.

 

Vėlyvoji Romos imperija pakenkė savo komercinei ekonomikai ją centralizuodama, reguliuodama ir devalvuodama valiutą.

 

Vėlyvieji Abasidų kalifai militarizavo savo ekonomiką, stengdamiesi atimti kontrolę iš dominuojančių pirklių.

 

Susidūrę su tarifais iš kitų šalių olandams, galiausiai jie įgyvendino savus.

 

 

Staigiausias antiglobalizacijos posūkis įvyko Kinijoje po to, kai 1368 m. valdžią užgrobė Mingų dinastija, pažadėdama bet kokia kaina atkurti stabilumą. Užsienio prekyba buvo baudžiama mirtimi, o netrukus net pakrančių prekyba buvo uždrausta. Didžiausia pasaulio armada buvo palikta supūti uoste, o Kinijos dvaras degino žemėlapius, kad užkirstų kelią būsimoms kelionėms.

 

 

Rezultatas iš tiesų buvo stabilumas – ir šimtmečius trukusi stagnacija. Kinija iš pažangiausios pasaulio civilizacijos virto skurdžia. XIX amžiuje ją puolė ir žemino Europos valstybės, tapusios jūrų valdovėmis.

 

 

Skaudu skaityti keliautojų, kurie vos keliais metais per vėlai, po represijų ir prekybos praradimo, pasiekė Romą, Bagdadą, Kinijos uostamiesčius ar Olandijos miestus, pasakojimus. Nyderlanduose apsilankęs, anglas nustebęs pastebėjo: „Ši prekybos tauta turi būti labai blogoje padėtyje. Dauguma jų pagrindinių miestų, deja, yra sunykę.“ Panašiai ir keliautojas, aplankęs Kinijos pakrantės miestus, pastebėjo: „Nuo tada, kai buvo uždrausta jūrų prekyba... visi praeities klestėjimo pėdsakai išnyko.“

 

Pamoka aiški: protekcionizmas gali atrodyti, kaip skydas, tačiau jis lengvai tampa narvu. Tai būdas atkirsti tautą nuo pasaulio smegenų ir įgūdžių, prarandant ne tik turtus, bet ir energiją bei nuolatinį atsinaujinimą, kurie suteikia civilizacijoms spindesio. Tada lieka tik blėstantys aukso amžių prisiminimai ir sudaužytos išmestų amforų skeveldros.

 

---

 

Šis esė yra adaptuota iš naujos Johano Norbergo knygos „Peak Human: What We Can Learn from the Rise and Fall of Golden Ages“, kuri rugsėjo 2 d. bus išleista leidyklos „Atlantic Books“.” [1]

 

1. REVIEW --- Great Civilizations Depend on Trade --- When countries open up to the free exchange of goods and ideas, the result can be a historic golden age. But trade is rarely allowed to stay free for long. Norberg, Johan.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 30 Aug 2025: C4.

 

I Study Stress. This Cure Surprised -- and Helped -- Me. --- How strangers in Hawaii taught me that self-care can mean caring for others.

“I was pacing the lobby of a Big Island hotel in flip-flops, panic rising in my chest like mercury in a thermometer. My luggage had vanished somewhere between the continental U.S. and Hawaii, and in less than 24 hours I was supposed to deliver a keynote speech to a room full of suits. The irony was not lost on me: Here I was, a stress physiologist who studies how humans handle pressure, completely undone by a missing suitcase.

 

That's when the hotelier noticed my distress. Without hesitation, he had a car take me to the shops. After three stores with nothing but Hawaiian shirts, I was ready to find a place to quietly weep. Then in the last shop something extraordinary happened.

 

The woman behind the counter listened to my predicament and chuckled, "Oh sweetie you aren't going to find what you need here." She handed me the keys to her brand-new BMW convertible and gave me directions to shops that sold business attire 40 minutes away. "Just bring it back when you're done," she said with a smile. I was flabbergasted. I don't even know your name, I protested. "I'll tell you when you bring my car back," she twinkled.

 

As I drove across the island, top down and doubts swirling (was I an unwitting drug mule?), I couldn't comprehend why a stranger would trust me with what was likely her most valuable possession.

 

I returned hours later, outfit secured and overcome with gratitude. Through tears, I asked the woman -- her name, it turned out, was Tani -- why she had done this. "That's how we take care of people here in Hawaii," she answered.

 

Then she revealed something deeper. "I've been stressed lately," she admitted. She was worried about her daughter, who had just moved back to the continental U.S.: "My hope is that somebody might do something similar for her if she was in the same circumstance."

 

When I returned to the hotel, the hotelier was eager to hear how my trip had gone. As I recounted Tani's extraordinary kindness, tears welled up in his eyes. Minutes later, an elaborate display of chocolates arrived at my room, accompanied by a two-page note. He explained that he'd been anxious about moving his family to Hawaii, but my story had quieted his stress.

 

In the self-help field, we tend to promote the usual stress-management arsenal: meditation apps, massage therapy, breathing exercises, yoga classes. These aren't wrong, but they rely on the individual to solve their own stress. In reality, these tools can sometimes exacerbate the problem, as people see their failure to self-regulate as proof there is something broken or wrong with them.

 

A study of workplace interventions to reduce stress, published in Industrial Relations Journal in 2024, revealed a startling truth: Of the 90 different stress-reduction strategies tested in corporate settings, which included meditation, massage and breathing exercises, only one consistently mitigated the negative effects of stress: serving others.

 

My Hawaiian crisis had become an impromptu case study. People experiencing their own stress had all instinctively relieved this pressure by helping someone else -- in this case, me. They weren't following any wellness program or stress-management protocol. They were simply, and perhaps unconsciously, responding to their own anxiety by extending kindness to another person.

 

This helped me see how we've been approaching stress relief backward. Instead of turning inward with bespoke wellness practices, we do best when we turn outward -- toward the needs of others. This doesn't mean meditation and self-care are useless, just that they are incomplete solutions.

 

My luggage crisis taught me that stress isn't necessarily the enemy we've made it out to be. When channeled properly, it can point us toward opportunities to serve.

 

We're all carrying invisible stressors. We're also all potential sources of relief for one another. In a world obsessed with self-optimization and individual wellness solutions, the most radical act might be the simplest one: noticing when someone else needs help, and then providing it.

 

---

 

Rebecca Heiss is a stress physiologist. Her latest book, "Springboard: Transform Stress to Work for You," will be published by Ideapress Publishing on Sept. 2.” [1]

 

1. REVIEW --- I Study Stress. This Cure Surprised -- and Helped -- Me. --- How strangers in Hawaii taught me that self-care can mean caring for others. Heiss, Rebecca.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 30 Aug 2025: C3. 

Aš tyrinėju stresą. Šis vaistas mane nustebino ir padėjo. --- Kaip nepažįstami žmonės Havajuose išmokė mane, kad rūpinimasis savimi gali reikšti rūpinimąsi kitais.

„Žingsniavau po Didžiosios salos viešbučio vestibiulį su šlepetėmis, krūtinėje kilo panika lyg gyvsidabris termometre. Mano bagažas dingo kažkur tarp žemyninės JAV ir Havajų, ir per mažiau nei 24 valandas turėjau pasakyti pagrindinį pranešimą salėje, pilnoje kostiumuotų žmonių. Ironija man neliko nepastebėta: štai aš, streso fiziologas, tyrinėjantis, kaip žmonės susidoroja su spaudimu, visiškai palaužtas dingusio lagamino.

 

Tada viešbučio savininkas pastebėjo mano nerimą. Nedvejodamas liepė automobiliu nuvežti mane į parduotuves. Aplankiusi tris parduotuves, kuriose buvo tik havajietiški marškiniai, buvau pasiruošusi susirasti vietą ramiai išsiverkti. Tada paskutinėje parduotuvėje nutiko kažkas nepaprasto.

 

Moteris už prekystalio išklausė mano keblią padėtį ir nusijuokė: „O, mieloji, čia nerasi to, ko tau reikia.“ Ji padavė man savo naujutėlaičio BMW kabrioleto raktelius ir nurodė, kur nuvykti į parduotuves, kuriose prekiaujama dalykiniais drabužiais už 40 minučių kelio. „Tiesiog parnešk jį atgal, kai baigsi“, – šypsodamasi pasakė ji. Buvau apstulbusi. Aš...“ „Net nežinau tavo vardo“, – protestavau. „Pasakysiu, kai parveši mano automobilį“, – ji mirktelėjo.

 

Važiuodama per salą nuleistu stogu ir abejonėmis (ar buvau netyčia narkotikų prekeivė?), negalėjau suprasti, kodėl nepažįstamasis man patikėjo tai, kas greičiausiai buvo jos vertingiausias turtas.

 

Po kelių valandų grįžau, apsiginklavusi apsirengusi ir apimta dėkingumo. Pro ašaras paklausiau moters – jos vardas, kaip paaiškėjo, buvo Tani – kodėl ji taip pasielgė. „Štai kaip mes rūpinamės žmonėmis čia, Havajuose“, – atsakė ji.

 

Tada ji atskleidė kai ką gilesnio. „Pastaruoju metu jaučiu stresą“, – prisipažino ji. Ji nerimavo dėl savo dukters, kuri ką tik grįžo į žemyninę JAV dalį: „Tikiuosi, kad kas nors galėtų padaryti kažką panašaus jai, jei ji atsidurtų tokioje pačioje situacijoje.“

 

Kai grįžau į viešbutį, viešbučio savininkas nekantravo išgirsti, kaip praėjo mano kelionė. Kai pasakojau apie nepaprastą Tani gerumą, jo akyse kaupėsi ašaros. Po kelių minučių į mano namus atkeliavo puošnus šokoladinių saldainių rinkinys. kambarį, prie kurio pridėtas dviejų puslapių raštelis. Jis paaiškino, kad nerimavo dėl šeimos persikėlimo į Havajus, bet mano istorija nuramino jo stresą.

 

Savipagalbos srityje esame linkę propaguoti įprastą streso valdymo arsenalą: meditacijos programėles, masažo terapiją, kvėpavimo pratimus, jogos užsiėmimus. Tai nėra blogai, tačiau jie priklauso nuo individo paties streso sprendimo. Realybėje šios priemonės kartais gali paaštrinti problemą, nes žmonės savo nesugebėjimą reguliuotis laiko įrodymu, kad kažkas sugedo ar yra negerai.

 

2024 m. žurnale „Darbo santykių žurnalas“ paskelbtas darbo vietos intervencijų stresui mažinti tyrimas atskleidė stulbinančią tiesą: iš 90 skirtingų streso mažinimo strategijų, išbandytų įmonių aplinkoje, įskaitant meditaciją, masažą ir kvėpavimo pratimus, tik viena nuosekliai sušvelnino neigiamą streso poveikį: tarnavimas kitiems.

 

Mano Havajų krizė tapo improvizuotu atvejo tyrimu. Žmonės, patiriantys savo stresą, instinktyviai sumažino šį spaudimą padėdami kam nors kitam – šiuo atveju man. Jie nesilaikė jokios sveikatingumo programos ar streso valdymo protokolo. Jie tiesiog, galbūt nesąmoningai, reagavo į savo nerimą, rodydami gerumą kitam žmogui.

 

Tai padėjo man suprasti, kaip mes į streso mažinimą žiūrėjome atvirkščiai. Užuot atsigręžę į vidų ir taikydami individualiai pritaikytas sveikatingumo praktikas, mums geriausiai sekasi, kai atsigręžiame į išorę – į kitų poreikius. Tai nereiškia, kad meditacija ir savęs priežiūra yra nenaudingi, tiesiog tai yra nepilni sprendimai.

 

Mano bagažo krizė išmokė mane, kad stresas nebūtinai yra toks priešas, kokiu jį pavaizdavome. Tinkamai nukreiptas, jis gali nukreipti mus į galimybes tarnauti.

 

Mes visi nešiojamės nematomus stresorius. Mes taip pat esame potencialūs vieni kitų palengvėjimo šaltiniai. Pasaulyje, apsėstame savęs optimizavimo ir individualių sveikatingumo sprendimų, radikaliausias veiksmas gali būti paprasčiausias: pastebėti, kada kitam žmogui reikia pagalbos, ir tada ją suteikti.

 

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Rebecca Heiss yra streso fiziologė. Jos naujausia knyga „Springboard: Transform Stress to Work for You“ bus išleista „Ideapress Publishing“ rugsėjo 2 d.” [1]

 

1. REVIEW --- I Study Stress. This Cure Surprised -- and Helped -- Me. --- How strangers in Hawaii taught me that self-care can mean caring for others. Heiss, Rebecca.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 30 Aug 2025: C3. 

Choosing a School: The Elite College Myth --- Panicky parents often think their children's success in life depends on going to a prestigious school. In reality, there are many paths to achieving great things.

“When I was going through my college search in the early 1990s, I applied to four schools, got into all of them and chose Ithaca College in upstate New York. It offered the major I wanted, was close to home and gave me a generous financial-aid package. My father was a high-school music teacher; my mother didn't go to college. College counseling in my high school was minimal, with two counselors for hundreds of students. We didn't know enough to worry about the fine gradations of prestige common in college searches today.

 

Hard work and a lot of luck means that I now live in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., where talk of ultra-selective colleges dominates swim meets and school gatherings for my teenage kids. This is where the "panicking class" lives: parents who fear that their children won't be able to replicate their lifestyle without landing a spot at an elite college.

 

As I've traveled around the country recently sharing advice from my 25 years of writing about higher education, I've heard this panic everywhere. In Hinsdale, a suburb of Chicago, a father who feared AI was coming for his accounting job called a degree from an elite school an "insurance policy." In Westchester County, just outside New York City, a mother felt guilty because her middle-school math choices "shut out" her son from top engineering programs. In Northern Virginia, a counselor told me that advising students to look beyond the top 50 colleges was bad advice because "McKinsey won't hire from second-tier schools."

 

What struck me in these conversations is that parents weren't asking about colleges -- they were asking for certainty. To find it, they fixate on outliers: the Harvard graduate who works for Goldman Sachs, the dots in the top-right quadrant of earnings charts. But here's what we rarely discuss: Even for graduates of elite colleges, extraordinary success is still a lottery with very long odds.

 

Think of it this way. All college graduates enter a career lottery for a chance at landing in the top 1% of earners. Recent research has found that graduates of top-ranked schools like Harvard or Stanford are 60% more likely to hit that jackpot. Essentially, they get two tickets in the lottery while graduates of public flagship universities get one.

 

But even with that extra ticket, the vast majority of elite-college graduates aren't winning the lottery either. Attending an Ivy League university does open doors, but it's not the guarantee of extraordinary success that parents seem to think. Nor does attending a different school preclude you from achieving great things.

 

"The reality is that for most graduates things look pretty similar regardless of where you went to college," David Deming, an economist at Harvard's Kennedy School, explained to me. Deming and his research team have produced several headline-grabbing studies on higher education in recent years based on massive amounts of data from federal tax returns. One study matched tax returns with college admissions records (deleting identifying data after the matches were made) and found that children from households in the top 1% of incomes were overrepresented at elite colleges.

 

But the study also looked at the tax records of the graduates themselves, to see whether degrees from those elite colleges brought success later in life. This question has vexed scholars for decades. One reason it's difficult to answer is that you can't send the same teenager to two different schools and then measure both outcomes.

 

 As a work-around, Deming and his team compared the earnings of students who were admitted to an Ivy or other selective college off the waitlist with students who were waitlisted but not admitted and went to college elsewhere.

 

Early in their careers, the graduates of elite colleges outperformed those who went elsewhere in three key ways. They were 60% more likely to have earnings in the top 1% -- that extra lottery ticket. They were nearly twice as likely to attend a graduate school ranked in the top 10. And they were three times as likely to work for a prestigious employer, such as a research hospital, a top law or consulting firm, or a national newspaper.

 

But when it came to earnings, Deming found that the average income of Ivy-plus graduates was pretty much the same as those who went to selective public flagship schools, such as Ohio State, the University of Texas at Austin and UCLA.

 

"If you go to Ohio State with a mindset that I want a job on Wall Street or to go to Harvard Law School, you can totally do it," Deming said.

 

If your neighbors loudly proclaim they're doing everything they can to get their child into an elite college, you might feel like a bad parent for not doing the same. But it's important to remember that not all graduates are chasing the same jobs with Wall Street firms, global consultancies or the latest Silicon Valley startup. In reality, most people's careers unfold close to where they grew up or attended college.

 

"If you get a degree in finance from Ohio State, you'll probably get a great job at Nationwide Insurance based in Columbus," Deming said. "Nationwide is a terrific regional employer, but a finance degree from Harvard will lead you to Goldman Sachs."

 

For most of us, the career lottery is a regional game. Colleges' alumni networks are densest in nearby states and cities, and alumni help new graduates get jobs. They broker introductions, write recommendations and provide quiet support, like making sure that a fellow alum's resume lands on the hirer's desk. Even national firms like Deloitte and KPMG, with offices across the country, tend to fill openings locally, recruiters told me. Some are looking for regional expertise -- energy in Houston, consumer banking in Chicago or finance in New York -- and look for engineering or business majors at colleges nearby.

 

Above all, employers want prospective hires who will stay put for a while. "If I go to the West Coast and try to pull those students, a lot of times they aren't committed to living on the East Coast," said Marybeth Caulfield, the senior manager of global university recruitment at personal-computing giant Lenovo, based in North Carolina. Most of Lenovo's recruiting is from schools east of the Mississippi, she told me.

 

Recruiters for Raymond James Financial spend most of their time at schools in the Southeast because two-thirds of its hires are for the firm's St. Petersburg, Fla., headquarters, said Simon Kho, who until recently was vice president and head of early-careers programs at the firm. "We have to think about this with a business mindset around where will the effort pay off," said Kho. "We don't just open the floodgates and hope they show up."

 

Pay also comes into play. "Sometimes prestige can hurt you," Caulfield said. "An MIT graduate is going to be looking for a Boston salary in North Carolina."

 

So why does the discussion of student outcomes focus so narrowly on graduates of elite colleges? Aspirational appeal is one factor. Families pursue top-ranked schools because their graduates are more likely to end up in the top 1% of earners, occupy certain leadership positions or receive major career accolades.

 

But that kind of success depends on much more than where you went to college. I asked Lightcast, a firm that analyzes job market data in real time by using LinkedIn and resume databases, to compare graduates of schools in different tiers of admissions selectivity -- under 20% acceptance rate, between 20% and 40%, and so on. We looked at recent graduates who completed a bachelor's degree and ended up at Fortune 50 firms, using size as a proxy for the most influential companies in the world.

 

The analysis found that elite colleges are slightly more likely to send alumni to a Fortune 50 company, but not by much. In terms of sheer numbers, very few Fortune 50 employees attended highly selective colleges, because those schools' enrollment numbers are tiny compared with higher education as a whole. Your future coworkers in any company are roughly four times as likely to have graduated from a college with an acceptance rate above 40% than from a more selective school, according to the Lightcast research. And as those coworkers move through their careers, many will end up in the executive suite.

 

Last year, Nature published a study with the headline, "The most successful and influential Americans come from a surprisingly narrow range of 'elite' educational backgrounds." The study focused on just 34 elite colleges attended by some Fortune 500 CEOs. But an appendix revealed that 378 other colleges also had alumni running Fortune 500 companies. Duke and Brown each had three graduates on the list, but so did Ball State, Louisiana State, San Diego State and many other schools.

 

The religion scholar James P. Carse wrote that life is made up of two kinds of games: finite and infinite. A finite game has a fixed endpoint, with winners and losers. That's college admissions. An infinite game goes on and on and has no definite winners. That's the career that comes after college. In trying to master the finite game of getting into an elite college, we too often lose sight of the infinite game of life.

 

Take Colleen McAllister, who turned down an offer of admission from Cornell University to attend Ithaca College, drawn by its communications school and a generous financial aid package. When I met her at an alumni event, she told me that she spent a semester at Ithaca's Los Angeles program, where she interned for a production company. After graduation, she eventually found herself up for a job at Illumination, the animation studio. "I had, at that point, done so many different internships and entry-level jobs," she told me. "I was happy to take out the trash, happy to do the coffee run. I was willing to read everything that crossed the desk."

 

One of her competitors for the job was, on paper, the "perfect candidate," an Ivy League graduate. But he showed up late to the interview and hadn't done the homework. "He was sort of above it all," McAllister recalled. She got the job. Over time, her reputation as a problem-solver earned her a direct line to the CEO, and eventually the role of creative producer on a Universal Studios theme-park ride based on "The Secret Life of Pets."

 

Stories like McAllister's rarely make the headlines because they don't fit the tidy narrative that elite colleges monopolize opportunity. But they show that in the career lottery, winning numbers are scattered everywhere. The extra ticket that elite colleges provide might improve your odds, but it doesn't guarantee a jackpot.

 

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This essay is adapted from Jeffrey Selingo's new book, "Dream School: Finding the College That's Right for You," which will be published by Scribner on Sept. 9.” [1]

 

1. REVIEW --- Choosing a School: The Elite College Myth --- Panicky parents often think their children's success in life depends on going to a prestigious school. In reality, there are many paths to achieving great things. Selingo, Jeffrey.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 30 Aug 2025: C1.