Dear students,↵
↵
The annual Riverdale Science Fair will be held on July 18 with the theme "Sustainable Future." Although we announced the fair last month, student registration is still lower than we expected. Therefore, we would like to encourage more of you to take part. You are invited to present a project, experiment, or model related to environmental conservation or renewable energy. You will have the opportunity to showcase your work for teachers, peers, and local scientists. If you are interested, please submit a brief description of your work by June 25. We look forward to your participation.↵
↵
Mr. Howard, Science Teacher

Luna went to the bakery to pick up a chocolate cake for her dad's 70th birthday. As she opened the box, she couldn't understand what she saw. It was a lemon cake. Then she noticed the message on top. It said, "Happy 50th Birthday, Dad!" Luna said to the baker, "I don't get it. The flavor and the message are wrong." She wondered if she made a mistake when ordering. The baker asked her to wait and walked away. Moments later, he returned with her cake, explaining they had received two similar orders. Knowing she had chosen a quality bakery, Luna said, "I see. Well, this looks perfect, even better than I imagined."

We can sometimes assume that the whole will be as good as each of its parts. Suppose, for example, you're in chargeof a startup, and you know that everyone you've brought on board is productive and efficient. It might seem logical toassume that, as a result, the startup will be productive and efficient, too — but this isn't necessarily true. The fallacy ofcomposition fails to allow for how the different "parts" interact with each other — if, for example, your efficient administrator and your highly skilled head of IT each assumes the other is in charge of collating prototype test results, then you have a problem. Equally, a unit composed of good people can still be working on a doomed project, and a project composed of good ideas may lack a stable center. When assembling a team with a common goal, always check the overall view as well as the individuals involved.

Humans excel at visual imagery. Our brains evolved this ability to create an internal mental picture or model of the world in which we can rehearse forthcoming actions, without the risks or the penalties of doing them in the real world. There are even hints from brainimaging studies by Harvard University psychologist Steve Kosslyn showing that your brain uses the same regions to imagine a scene as when you actually view one. But evolution has seen to it that such internally generated representations are never as authentic as the real thing. This is a wise bit of selfrestraint on your genes' part. If your internal model of the world were a perfect substitute, then anytime you felt hungry you could simply imagine yourself at a banquet, consuming a feast. You would have no incentive to find real food and would soon starve to death. As the Bard said, "You cannot cloy the hungry edge of appetite by bare imagination of a feast."

For each objective probability — from one percent to 100 percent — we want to know the subjective probability weight. When we make decisions, do we treat a onepercent chance just like one percent, or like something else? Events that could happen but aren't likely — lowprobability events — can be defined as probabilities up to about 25 percent. Lowprobability events tend to factor more into decisions than they should. That is, an event that has an objective onepercent chance of occurring could subjectively seem like it has a fivepercent chance of occurring. We overestimate the likelihood of these lowprobability events. In general, the smaller the probability, the more we overestimate its likelihood. For example, people who play the lottery are often optimistic about winning. However, the odds of a single ticket winning the largest, most popular U.S. lotteries are on the order of one in 175 million.

Many of the barriers to trade exist not because of a lack of markets or customers, but because there are major barriers to getting products to market at competitive prices. Transaction costs are significant for companies — not only the straight exchange costs, but also the cost of converting, paying, and hedging funds just to pay for the goods and services. Having a common currency means that many of those transaction costs disappear and the savings can be reinvested back into firms' productivity and innovation. Basically, useless costs turn into productive costs — with longerterm benefits to the whole economy. By unifying some of the currencies, whole economies benefit and grow more than they would as independents. So a common currency provides for a strong economic foundation that all can benefit from.

The light from even our nearest stellar neighbour takes four years to reach us. When we look at the stars, we are looking back in time. This is an incredible gift. We can see parts of space, parts of our universe, as they were many years ago. The further we can collect light from, the further back in time we can look. If you look at the bright star Betelgeuse, which glows in the Orion constellation, you wind time back more than six hundred years. Its reddish glow started its journey to Earth in the Middle Ages. The stars in Orion's belt are even further away. Their light, familiar to generations of humans, has travelled at least 1,000 years to reach us. This means we have a chance of understanding the history of the universe because we can see the more distant parts of it as they were in the past, thousands or millions or billions of years ago.

The graph above shows the proportions of people aged over 65 and under 15 in five selected regions in 2024. North America was the only region where the proportions of people over 65 and under 15 were identical, both standing at 18%. In Europe, the proportion of people over 65 exceeded the proportion of those under 15 by 4 percentage points. In Oceania, the proportion of people under 15 was higher than that in Europe, whereas the reverse was true for the proportion of people over 65. Compared to the other regions, SubSaharan Africa showed the greatest proportion of people under 15.

Jacob Lawrence was an American painter known for vivid scenes of AfricanAmerican history and daily life. Born in Atlantic City in 1917, he moved to Harlem at 13 and studied art at Utopia Children's Center. He used bright colors and simplified shapes in his paintings. The Migration Series, widely regarded as Jacob Lawrence's masterpiece, brought him national recognition. During World War II, he served in the U.S. Coast Guard and produced many paintings, but most of them were lost. Later, he taught at the University of Washington for 16 years. Throughout his lifetime, he received honorary degrees from several universities, including Harvard. Until a few weeks before his death, he continued to explore the lives of AfricanAmericans through his painting.

Hopon↵
Hopoff↵
City Tour↵
Enjoy a tour you can control. Get on or off the bus at↵
15 different stops. Explore what you want, when you↵
want, for as long as you want!↵
On the Bus↵
－ Free WiFi↵
and USB ports↵
－ Openair↵
top level provides↵
wonderful city views.↵
－ Unlimited rides for one day↵
Audio Guides↵
－ Scan QR codes to listen to information about landmarks.↵
－ Languages available: English, Spanish, and Chinese↵
Special Offer↵
Show your tour ticket to get a discount at museums.↵
※For prices and more information, check out h*h#citytour.com.

Oneday↵
Glass Art Workshop↵
Have you ever seen glass melt and glow like lava?↵
Come to Spark Studio and learn how to heat and shape↵
glass into a beautiful piece of art.↵
Time: July 12th, 9:30 - 11:30 a.m.↵
Participants↵
• For safety, only adults & children over 12↵
• 10 people maximum↵
Details↵
• $60 per person, including all tools and materials↵
• You can make one cup, vase, or bowl.↵
Note: Glass objects need 24 hours to cool, so you must↵
pick up your artwork another day.↵
Sign up now at sp*rk2glass.com.

The renowned British philosopher Alfred North Whitehead asserted that "civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking about them." Take, for example, the "advance" offered to civilization by the discount coupon, which allows consumers to assume that they will receive a reduced purchase price by presenting the coupon. The extent to which we have learned to operate mechanically on that assumption is illustrated in the experience of one automobiletire company. Mailedout coupons that ― because of a printing error ― offered no savings to recipients produced just as much customer response as did errorfree coupons that offered substantial savings. The obvious but instructive point here is that we expect discount coupons to do double duty. Not only do we expect them to save us money, we also expect them to save us the time and mental energy required to think about how to do it. In today's world, we need the first advantage to handle pocketbook strain; but we need the second advantage to handle something potentially more important ― brain strain.

Usually, innovative hightech products have low price elasticity. This means that high variation in price, an increase as well as a decrease, does not significantly modify demand. These hightech products have few substitutes, meaning that the costs to switch to another product are high. Additionally, at the first stage of the technology, buyers — either innovators or forerunners — are less sensitive to price than to additional performance; they often have deep pockets or are ready to spend a lot for a new innovative and outstanding product. For instance, with its new product range, a highend mobile phone manufacturer is aiming at the 3% of millionaire households with assets of more than $2.5 million; those are customers who are ready to accept the price range the manufacturer has set. At that stage, the competitors are not interested in lowering their price significantly whatsoever, because they are chasing the same categories of customers, not sensitive to price. Furthermore, the high price of these products is often perceived as a sign of quality and reinforces a customer's confidence in the company.

One easily underappreciated feature of a city street or square is its "futureproof" nature. The ancient medieval squares in places like Marrakesh and Siena are still places where stuff is sold every day, even if the stuff itself has changed over the last five hundred years. The city square is a fairly futureproof technology, as is the shopping street, even in an age of online shopping. For example, the same physical store that once sold buggy whips and typewriters might now repair damaged phones and sell bubble tea. The same infrastructure supports evolving uses. Jane Jacobs, the great prophet of the city economy, made much of this fact in her books, including The Death and Life of Great American Cities and The Nature of Economies. As she pointed out, the great advantage of a city architecture is its ability to support change in uses, and Jacobs correctly predicted the persistence of the city itself, unlike those who predicted the rise of the Internet would mean the death of the city.

The genomics revolution made it possible to see just how impactful touch is to plants on a deeper level. Peering at the genes of Arabidopsis thaliana, a weedy plant in the mustard family and the lab rat of the plant biology world, researchers saw that touch quietly triggered such a dramatic response in their hormones and gene expression that it could substantially inhibit their growth. They stroked the arabidopsis with soft paintbrushes, and then analyzed the plants' genetic responses. Within thirty minutes of being touched, 10 percent of the plant's genome was altered. Clearly, the plant was reorganizing its priorities to deal with the disturbance, and rerouting energy away from the hard work of getting taller. Touched multiple times, arabidopsis cut its upward growth rate by as much as 30 percent.

Evolution will come to a standstill until something in the conditions changes: the onset of an ice age, a change in the average rainfall of the area, a shift in the prevailing wind. Such changes do happen when we are dealing with a timescale as long as the evolutionary one. As a consequence, evolution normally does not come to a halt, but constantly tracks the changing environment. If there is a steady downward drift in the average temperature in the area, a drift that persists over centuries, successive generations of animals will be propelled by a steady selection ‘pressure' in the direction, say, of growing longer coats of hair. If after a few thousand years of reduced temperature the trend reverses and average temperatures creep up again, the animals will come under the influence of a new selection pressure, and will be pushed towards growing shorter coats again.

The high price of land in metropolitan areas has implications for the efficient employment of resources. For example, in New York City, as in many large cities, sidewalk vending carts sell everything from hot dogs to ice cream. Why are these carts so popular, with over 3,000 in New York City alone? Consider the resources used to supply hot dogs: land, labor, capital, entrepreneurial ability, plus intermediate goods such as hot dogs, buns, and other ingredients. Which of these do you suppose is most expensive in New York City? Retail space along Madison Avenue rents for an average of $550 a year per square foot. Because operating a hot dog cart requires about 4 square yards, it could cost as much as $20,000 a year to rent that much commercial space. Aside from the necessary public permits, however, space on the public sidewalk is free to vendors. Profitmaximizing street vendors substitute public sidewalks for costly commercial space.

The process we go through when we look at a work of art to determine if we recognize and can make sense of its content is not just a visual one. It is a mental process as well, largely based on the elements within and about the work we can identify and categorize. As we look and think, we may be given clues about what the work means by where it is, when it was made, what culture it came from, who created it, or why it was made. Any information we can gather helps us understand the work's context, that is, for what historical, social, personal, political, or scientific reasons the work of art was made. And then, using all the contextual information we have gathered, we interpret the work of art's content to discover what it means or symbolizes.

For most animals the struggle to survive takes up all their time. Finding food and drink, keeping warm and clean, avoiding predators, migrating and reproducing use up all their energies.If they do have any time to spare, they spend it resting or sleeping. Only very young animals, under the protection of their parents, have enough surplus energy to engage in lively bouts of play. This was also true for our early ancestors. The constant search for food would have put heavy demands upon them. But as they slowly evolved into more and more efficient hunters, the situation changed. The secret of their success was the development of much greater intelligence. They used brain not brawn to kill their prey. At the end of the long hunting era, before they turned to farming, they were already enjoying some degree of affluence. In certain regions, at particular times of year, the prey was sufficiently plentiful and their hunting techniques sufficiently advanced for them to experience a remarkable degree of prosperity. They had time on their hands.

Think about a time when you were startled. Did you come to a sudden stop, freeze all your movements, and hold your breath as you scanned the environment for a threat? All these responses maximize our ability to avoid detection, locate the source of possible danger, and prepare to fight or flee. As sophisticated as language has become, it is still the creation of sound that might give away our location to a potential predator. Because of this, the freeze response results in the inhibition of language in highly stressful and traumatic situations. Natural selection promoted the evolution of language but conserved the freeze rule. When the threat passes, we begin to relax and find our voices again, perhaps even to laugh at our own reactions. But what if we can never relax? What if our experiences shape our brain to be in a constant state of fear? This interference with the proper development and integration of neural networks can result in chronic stress and even mental illness.

Video gaming is one of the most studied technologies with regard to empathy. Because there have been longstanding concerns about the impact of violent video games on youth, much research has been conducted over the last couple of decades on the topic. While measuring and documenting the impact of video game violence, scientists have formulated credible explanations of how video gaming could affect empathy. ( ③ ) Part of a normal, healthy reaction to witnessing violent events is to feel negative emotions, and to experience physiological arousal that is connected to fear or disgust. With repeated exposure to violent events — such as what might happen when a person plays violent video games — this normal reaction might become blunted, a phenomenon known as desensitization. The next step in this problematic process would be having diminished emotional responses to violence, which could also interfere with the ability to recognize and/or to sympathize with others, leading to reduced empathy. A significant body of work shows an association between extensive violent video gaming and reduced empathy in people.

Realising the benefits of differentiation, some brands broadcast their social purpose before they do much actual good. Their marketers are using social purpose to boost the brand's reputation, rather than embracing the purpose itself. Making a real difference with social problems is hard enough; to succeed, it has to follow from an authentic, companywide commitment to the purpose. Otherwise the mission is just windowdressing, or what we call "purposewashing" ― similar to greenwashing, where purposedriven activities serve mainly for publicity purposes. We end up with what Anand Giridhardas describes in Winners Take All : "social purpose that just furthers the charade of elites disrupting the old order without giving much back". Purposewashing brands gain one of the benefits of social purpose, differentiation, but only for a short while. They lose out on positioning for future markets, and they might even make employees feel worse about working for them.

The brain needs to create a model of a constant pulse ― a schema ― so that we know when the musicians are not conforming to it. This is similar to variations of a melody: We need to have a mental representation of what the melody is in order to know ― and appreciate ― when the musician is taking liberties with it. Metrical extraction, knowing what the pulse is and when we expect it to occur, is a crucial part of musical emotion. Music communicates to us emotionally through systematic violations of expectations. These violations can occur in any domain ― the domain of pitch, rhythm, tempo, and so on ― but occur they must. Music is organized sound, but the organization has to involve some element of the unexpected or it is emotionally flat and robotic. Too much organization may technically still be music, but it would be music that no one wants to listen to. The brain models anticipated musical patterns, which creates the possibility for emotional impact to arise when musicians break these patterns, making music engaging.

The major consumer of oil is transport. But consider what has happened over the last 30 years or so to the technology involved in producing the internal combustion engine. Because oil is expensive, car engines today are far more efficient in their consumption of fuel (and far less polluting) than they were in 1972. The cars that Asia buys tomorrow will certainly not be anything like those Americans use today. Americans will not buy today's cars tomorrow either. In fact, if the price of oil does rise much further then fuel cell technology (which produces energy from water!) will receive yet another momentum. The big car multinationals have already produced the prototype motors ― they are currently racing to try and get prices down and engine performances up. Their future profits depend upon it. Imagine now if there is a breakthrough in fuel cell technology. What would happen to oil prices? They would fall dramatically ― signalling much less demand than supply ― and oil companies and OPEC oil producers would stand to lose much income. The fact that this threat is real is driving the producers to look for alternative sources of income. The ‘oil majors' have diversified and are now more energy companies than oil companies these days and the OPEC countries are urgently attempting to diversify other industries.

As part of a kindness project, Orange High School students wrote cheerful letters to elders in a countryside village. Anna wrote to Mrs. Pike. She shared about her balcony garden at home and included drawings of flowers. Anna mentioned that despite having limited space, she enjoyed taking care of her plants. Her letter concluded by expressing hope that Mrs. Pike also had a nice garden. After sending the letter, Anna forgot about it until a month later when a package arrived at her home. Anna noticed the box in front of her door. She walked closer and saw it was addressed to her. When Anna opened it, she found a folded letter and a jar of homemade strawberry mint jam from Mrs. Pike. She wrote, "Your words made me smile. I used to have a garden, but when my husband died, I stopped planting. Your letter reminded me how much I missed it. So I planted some herbs. Have a taste!" The letter was signed, "Love, Mrs. Pike." Anna was deeply moved by Mrs. Pike's response. When her teacher announced that her class would visit the village to meet the seniors, Anna was thrilled. As they arrived, Mrs. Pike warmly greeted Anna with open arms. She pointed to a green space beside her house, saying, "Look at my herbs." Anna smiled and commented on how wonderful they must smell. Together, they spent the day planting seeds. Mrs. Pike even gave Anna some herbs to take home. Mrs. Pike thanked Anna for brightening her spirit. After the visit, Anna continued writing to Mrs. Pike every month. She also started a gardening club where students planted seeds in recycled jars and cups. Anna used the empty jam jar to plant some rosemary, which reminded her of Mrs. Pike's herb garden. The rosemary grew by the window. Whenever Anna looked at it, she had a warm feeling. It was a daily reminder that people, like plants, sometimes just need a little sunlight.