Dear Mr. Terry Walter, I am the principal of Springfield Public School. As you know, Springfield Public School is located at the intersection of First Street and Pine Street. The safety of our children is at risk largely due to the disregard for speed limits by motorists traveling along Pine Street. I have regularly witnessed vehicles traveling far in excess of the speed limit on Pine Street. Additionally, parents have expressed concern for the safety of their children who must cross Pine Street. For these reasons, we are requesting the installation of speed bumps on Pine Street. I know that one of your missions, as well as ours, is to ensure that our young people are afforded a safe and secure environment to and from school each day. I anticipate that your approval of this request will greatly improve the safety of our children. Sincerely, Emma Hudson

Rivera, who was closest to the dispenser, spun around. He cast about, looking for the source of the fire, and for a second Steve thought he might miss the smoke. Then Rivera grabbed the burning cylinder and headed for the edge of the flight deck. There was a crack like a rifle shot. Sparks and rockets ripped apart the night. Rivera rolled on the ground. His entire arm was a glowing torch. Steve ran. When he reached the burning man, he plunged to his knees and ripped off his float coat. He used the vest to smother the flames on Rivera's arm and back, screaming for a medic even though he knew he wouldn't be heard.

When you enter a store, what do you see? It is quite likely that you will see many options and choices. It doesn't matter whether you want to buy tea, coffee, jeans, or a phone. In all these situations, we are basically flooded with options from which we can choose. What will happen if we ask someone, whether online or offline, if he or she prefers having more alternatives or less? The majority of people will tell us that they prefer having more alternatives. This finding is interesting because, as science suggests, the more options we have, the harder our decision making process will be. The thing is that when the amount of options exceeds a certain level, our decision making will start to suffer.

What we need in education is not measurement, accountability, or standards. While these can be useful tools for improvement, they should hardly occupy center stage. Our focus should instead be on making sure we are giving our youth an education that is going to arm them to save humanity. We are faced with unprecedented perils, and these perils are multiplying and pushing at our collective gates. We should be bolstering curriculum that helps young people mature into ethical adults who feel a responsibility to the global community. Without this sense of responsibility we have seen that many talented individuals give in to their greed and pride, and this destroys economies, ecosystems, and entire species. While we certainly should not abandon efforts to develop standards in different content areas, and also strengthen the STEM subjects, we need to take seriously our need for an education centered on global responsibility. If we don't, we risk extinction.

Although we don't know the full neurological effects of digital technologies on young children's development, we do know that all screen time is not created equal. For example, reading an e-book, videoconferencing with grandma, or showing your child a picture you just took of them is not the same as the passive, television-watching screen time that concerns many parents and educators. So, rather than focusing on how much children are interacting with screens, parents and educators are turning their focus instead to what children are interacting with and who is talking with them about their experiences. Though parents may be tempted to hand a child a screen and walk away, guiding children's media experiences helps them build important 21st Century skills, such as critical thinking and media literacy.

Many parents do not understand why their teenagers occasionally behave in an irrational or dangerous way. At times, it seems like teens don't think things through or fully consider the consequences of their actions. Adolescents differ from adults in the way they behave, solve problems, and make decisions. There is a biological explanation for this difference. Studies have shown that brains continue to mature and develop throughout adolescence and well into early adulthood. Scientists have identified a specific region of the brain that is responsible for immediate reactions including fear and aggressive behavior. This region develops early. However, the frontal cortex, the area of the brain that controls reasoning and helps us think before we act, develops later. This part of the brain is still changing and maturing well into adulthood.

The graph above shows the division of labor in households where both parents work full-time in 2015. The percentage of mother does more households in every category is higher than that of father does more households. While the category with the highest percentage of mother does more households is Managing children's schedules / activities, the category with the highest percentage of father does more households is Disciplining children. When it comes to taking care of children when they're sick, the percentage of mother does more households is the same as that of share equally households. The percentage of share equally households is not over two times higher than that of mother does more households in three categories. The category that shows the highest percentage of share equally households is Playing or doing activities with children, followed by the category Disciplining children.

Shah Rukh Khan is an Indian film actor and producer. Khan studied economics in college but spent much of his time at Delhi's Theatre Action Group, where he studied acting. He moved from Delhi to Mumbai to pursue a full-time career in Bollywood, which led him to great fame. Referred to in the media as the King of Bollywood or King Khan, he has appeared in more than 80 Bollywood films. In 2007, the French government awarded Khan the Order of Arts and Letters for his contribution to cinema. He is regularly featured on lists of the most influential people in Indian culture, and in 2008, he was chosen as one of the 50 most powerful people in the world. Khan's philanthropic endeavors have provided health care and disaster relief, and he was honored with UNESCO's Pyramide con Marni award in 2011 for his support of children's education.

《Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage Tours & Open House》 Come visit Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage people create an environmentally friendly culture! Regular Tours: • Dates: 2nd and 4th Saturdays of every month (Apr. to Oct.) • Hours: 1 p.m. - 3 p.m. • Price: Free of charge Special Tours: If you are unable to come to our regularly scheduled Saturday tour, you can email us to schedule an alternate tour. (Email: info@rabbitecov.org) • 1 person: $15 • Groups of 2-4 people: $25 per group • Groups of 5 or more people: $5 per person Annual Open House: • Date: Saturday, September 8, 2018 • Free tours begin every half hour from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. For more information, please call 567-555-8899.

《A Midsummer Night's Dream Audition - a musical adaptation of the William Shakespeare play》 We are looking for dancers for the musical A Midsummer Night's Dream that will open at the Elliot Arts Center in the spring of 2019. • When: - Saturday, Dec. 15, 2018 (9 a.m. until 6 p.m.) - Sunday, Dec. 16, 2018(9 a.m. until 11 a.m.) • Where: Studio Vahn Requirement: • a modern / ballet dance background • ability to sing preferred • no prior stage experience required Registration: • If you are interested in auditioning, email us at casting@studiovahn.com. • Please include in your email: - a completed application form with current photos - a signed guardian consent form (only teens) • All applications must be received by Friday, Nov. 30, 2018. For more information, visit www.studiovahn.com.

Are cats liquid or solid? That's the kind of question that could win a scientist an Ig Nobel Prize, a parody of the Nobel Prize that honors research that makes people laugh, then think. But it wasn't with this in mind that Marc-Antoine Fardin, a physicist at Paris Diderot University, set out to find out whether house cats flow. Fardin noticed that these furry pets can adapt to the shape of the container they sit in similarly to what fluids such as water do. So he applied rheology, the branch of physics that deals with the deformation of matter, to calculate the time it takes for cats to take up the space of a vase or bathroom sink. The conclusion? Cats can be either liquid or solid, depending on the circumstances. A cat in a small box will behave like a fluid, filling up all the space. But a cat in a bathtub full of water will try to minimize its contact with it and behave very much like a solid.

A phenomenon in social psychology, the Pratfall Effect states that an individual's perceived attractiveness increases or decreases after he or she makes a mistake ― depending on the individual's perceived competence. As celebrities are generally considered to be competent individuals, and often even presented as flawless or perfect in certain aspects, committing blunders will make one's humanness endearing to others. Basically, those who never make mistakes are perceived as being less attractive and likable than those who make occasional mistakes. Perfection, or the attribution of that quality to individuals, creates a perceived distance that the general public cannot relate to ―making those who never make mistakes perceived as being less attractive or likable. However, this can also have the opposite effect ― if a perceived average or less than average competent person makes a mistake, he or she will be less attractive and likable to others.

A lovely little girl was holding two apples with both hands. Her mom came in and softly asked her little daughter with a smile, My sweetie, could you give your mom one of your two apples? The girl looked up at her for some seconds. Then she suddenly took a quick bite of one apple, and then quickly of the other. Although the mom felt the smile on her face freeze, she tried hard not to reveal her disappointment. Then the little girl handed one of her bitten apples to her, and said, Mommy, here you are. This is the sweeter one. There, she realized no matter who you are, how experienced you are, and how knowledgeable you think you are, you should always delay judgment.

Online environments vary widely in how easily you can save whatever happens there, what I call its recordability and preservability. Even though the design, activities, and membership of social media might change over time, the content of what people posted usually remains intact. Email, video, audio, and text messages can be saved. When perfect preservation is possible, time has been suspended. Whenever you want, you can go back to reexamine those events from the past. In other situations, permanency slips between our fingers, even challenging our reality testing about whether something existed at all, as when an email that we seem to remember receiving mysteriously disappears from our inbox. The slightest accidental tap of the finger can send an otherwise everlasting document into nothingness.

Verbal and nonverbal signs are not only relevant but also significant to intercultural communication. The breakdown of them helps to identify aspects of conversations. Here is an excellent example. Newly hired Indian and Pakistani assistants in a staff cafeteria at Heathrow Airport were often perceived as rude or uncooperative by their supervisors and the airport staff, while the Indian and Pakistani women complained of discrimination. Observation revealed that intonation patterns were the primary cause. When the staff ordered meat, the cafeteria assistant was supposed to ask them whether they would like to have some gravy. Instead of saying gravy? with a rising intonation, the Asian assistants would say gravy with a falling intonation, which is their normal way of asking a question. However, this may appear rude to native speakers of English: gravy with falling intonation came across as a statement, suggesting This is gravy. Take it or leave it.

Science can only tell us how the world appears to us, not how it is independent of our observation of it, and therefore right now will always elude science. When you look into space, you are looking into an ancient past. Some of the stars are already long dead yet we still see them because of their traveling light. Let's say that we are on one of those stars situated roughly sixty million light-years away. If we had a really awesome telescope pointed at the earth, we would see the dinosaurs walking around. The end of the universe is probably so old that if we had that telescope, we might be able to see the beginning. Besides faraway things, even the immediate objects around us are all afterimages of the past because there is still a time lag for the reflection of light to reach our eyes. Every sensation our body feels has to wait for the information to be carried to the brain.

For many centuries European science, and knowledge in general, was recorded in Latin ― a language that no one spoke any longer and that had to be learned in schools. Very few individuals, probably less than one percent, had the means to study Latin enough to read books in that language and therefore to participate in the intellectual discourse of the times. Moreover, few people had access to books, which were handwritten, scarce, and expensive. The great explosion of scientific creativity in Europe was certainly helped by the sudden spread of information brought about by Gutenberg's use of movable type in printing and by the legitimation of everyday languages, which rapidly replaced Latin as the medium of discourse. In sixteenth-century Europe it became much easier to make a creative contribution not necessarily because more creative individuals were born then than in previous centuries or because social supports became more favorable, but because information became more widely accessible.

Calling your pants blue jeans almost seems redundant because practically all denim is blue. While jeans are probably the most versatile pants in your wardrobe, blue actually isn't a particularly neutral color. Ever wonder why it's the most commonly used hue? Blue was the chosen color for denim because of the chemical properties of blue dye. Most dyes will permeate fabric in hot temperatures, making the color stick. The natural indigo dye used in the first jeans, on the other hand, would stick only to the outside of the threads. When the indigo-dyed denim is washed, tiny amounts of that dye get washed away, and the thread comes with them. The more denim was washed, the softer it would get, eventually achieving that worn-in, made-just-for-me feeling you probably get with your favorite jeans. That softness made jeans the trousers of choice for laborers.

Your concepts are a primary tool for your brain to guess the meaning of incoming sensory inputs. For example, concepts give meaning to changes in sound pressure so you hear them as words or music instead of random noise. In Western culture, most music is based on an octave divided into twelve equally spaced pitches: the equal-tempered scale codified by Johann Sebastian Bach in the 17th century. All people of Western culture with normal hearing have a concept for this ubiquitous scale, even if they can't explicitly describe it. Not all music uses this scale, however. When Westerners hear Indonesian gamelan music first time, which is based on seven pitches per octave with varied tunings, it's more likely to sound like noise. A brain that's been wired by listening to twelve-tone scales doesn't have a concept for that music.

Framing matters in many domains. When credit cards started to become popular forms of payment in the 1970s, some retail merchants wanted to charge different prices to their cash and credit card customers. To prevent this, credit card companies adopted rules that forbade their retailers from charging different prices to cash and credit customers. However, when a bill was introduced in Congress to outlaw such rules, the credit card lobby turned its attention to language. Its preference was that if a company charged different prices to cash and credit customers, the credit price should be considered the normal (default) price and the cash price a discount ― rather than the alternative of making the cash price the usual price and charging a surcharge to credit card customers. The credit card companies had a good intuitive understanding of what psychologists would come to call framing. The idea is that choices depend, in part, on the way in which problems are stated.

Tap your finger on the surface of a wooden table or desk, and observe the loudness of the sound you hear. Then, place your ear flat on top of the table or desk. With your finger about one foot away from your ear, tap the table top and observe the loudness of the sound you hear again. The volume of the sound you hear with your ear on the desk is much louder than with it off the desk. Sound waves are capable of traveling through many solid materials as well as through air. Solids, like wood for example, transfer the sound waves much better than air typically does because the molecules in a solid substance are much closer and more tightly packed together than they are in air. This allows the solids to carry the waves more easily and efficiently, resulting in a louder sound. The density of the air itself also plays a determining factor in the loudness of sound waves passing through it.

At their heart, games differ from other media in one fundamental way: they offer players the chance to influence outcomes through their own efforts. With rare exception, this is not true of film, novels, or television. Readers and viewers of these other media follow along, reacting to the story and its twists and turns, without having a direct personal impact on the events they witness. In games, players have the unique ability to control what unfolds. As Sid Meier, a game designer, once said, A good game is a series of interesting choices.

A primary school teacher is helping students to understand fractional parts by using what she thinks is a commonplace reference. Today, we're going to talk about cutting up a Thanksgiving holiday favorite ―pumpkin pie. She continues with an explanation of parts. Well into her discourse, a young African American boy, looking puzzled, asks, What is pumpkin pie? Most African Americans are likely to serve sweet potato pie for holiday dinners. In fact, one of the ways that African American parents explain pumpkin pie to their children is to say that it is something like sweet potato pie. For them, sweet potato pie is the common referent. Even the slight difference of being unfamiliar with pumpkin pie can serve as a source of interference for the student. Rather than be engaged actively in the lesson, he may have been preoccupied with trying to imagine pumpkin pie: What does it taste like? How does it smell? Is its texture chunky like apple or cherry pie? In the mind of a child, all of these questions can become more of the focus than the subject of fractions that the teacher is attempting to teach. Even small differences in cultural knowledge have the potential to affect students' learning.

In 2000, James Kuklinski of the University of Illinois led an influential experiment in which more than 1,000 Illinois residents were asked questions about welfare. More than half indicated that they were confident that their answers were correct ― but in fact, only three percent of the people got more than half of the questions right. Perhaps more disturbingly, the ones who were the most confident they were right were generally the ones who knew the least about the topic. Kuklinski calls this sort of response the I know I'm right syndrome. It implies not only that most people will resist correcting their factual beliefs, he wrote, but also that the very people who most need to correct them will be least likely to do so. How can we have things so wrong and be so sure that we're right? Part of the answer lies in the way our brains are wired. Generally, people tend to seek consistency. There is a substantial body of psychological research showing that people tend to interpret information with an eye toward reinforcing their preexisting views. If we believe something about the world, we are more likely to passively accept as truth any information that confirms our beliefs, and actively dismiss information that doesn't. This is known as motivated reasoning. Whether or not the consistent information is accurate, we might accept it as fact, as confirmation of our beliefs. This makes us more confident in said beliefs, and even less likely to entertain facts that contradict them.