Dear parents, Regular attendance at school is essential in maximizing student potential. Recently, we've become concerned about the number of unapproved absences across all grades. I would like to further clarify that your role as a parent is to approve any school absence. Parents must provide an explanation for absences to the school within 7 days from the first day of any period of absence. Where an explanation has not been received within the 7-day time frame, the school will record the absence as unjustified on the student's record. Please ensure that you go to the parent portal site and register the reason any time your child is absent. Please approve all absences, so that your child will not be at a disadvantage. Many thanks for your cooperation. Sincerely, Natalie Brown, Vice Principal

Ester stood up as soon as she heard the hum of a hover engine outside. Mail, she shouted and ran down the third set of stairs and swung open the door. It was pouring now, but she ran out into the rain. She was facing the mailbox. There was a single, unopened letter inside. She was sure this must be what she was eagerly waiting for. Without hesitation, she tore open the envelope. She pulled out the paper and unfolded it. The letter said, 'Thank you for applying to our company. We would like to invite you to our internship program. We look forward to seeing you soon.' She jumped up and down and looked down at the letter again. She couldn't wait to tell this news to her family.

People behave in highly predictable ways when they experience certain thoughts. When they agree, they nod their heads. So far, no surprise, but according to an area of research known as proprioceptive psychology, the process also works in reverse. Get people to behave in a certain way and you cause them to have certain thoughts. The idea was initially controversial, but fortunately it was supported by a compelling experiment. Participants in a study were asked to fixate on various products moving across a large computer screen and then indicate whether the items appealed to them. Some of the items moved vertically (causing the participants to nod their heads while watching), and others moved horizontally (resulting in a side-to-side head movement). Participants preferred vertically moving products without being aware that their yes and no head movements had played a key role in their decisions. -> In one study, participants responded favorably to products on a computer screen when they moved their heads up and down, which showed that their decisions were unconsciously influenced by their behavior.

The introduction of new technologies clearly has both positive and negative impacts for sustainable development. Good management of technological resources needs to take them fully into account. Technological developments in sectors such as nuclear energy and agriculture provide examples of how not only environmental benefits but also risks to the environment or human health can accompany technological advances. New technologies have profound social impacts as well. Since the industrial revolution, technological advances have changed the nature of skills needed in workplaces, creating certain types of jobs and destroying others, with impacts on employment patterns. New technologies need to be assessed for their full potential impacts, both positive and negative.

North America's native cuisine met the same unfortunate fate as its native people, save for a few relics like the Thanksgiving turkey. Certainly, we still have regional specialties, but the Carolina barbecue will almost certainly have California tomatoes in its sauce, and the Louisiana gumbo is just as likely to contain Indonesian farmed shrimp. If either of these shows up on a fast-food menu with lots of added fats or HFCS, we seem unable either to discern or resist the corruption. We have yet to come up with a strong set of generalized norms, passed down through families, for savoring and sensibly consuming what our land and climate give us. We have, instead, a string of fad diets convulsing our bookstores and bellies, one after another, at the scale of the national best seller. Nine out of ten nutritionists view this as evidence that we have entirely lost our marbles.

Perhaps, the advent of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the workplace may bode well for Emotional Intelligence (EI). As AI gains momentum and replaces people in jobs at every level, predictions are, there will be a premium placed on people who have high ability in EI. The emotional messages people send and respond to while interacting are, at this point, far beyond the ability of AI programs to mimic. As we get further into the age of the smart machine, it is likely that sensing and managing emotions will remain one type of intelligence that puzzles AI. This means people and jobs involving EI are safe from being taken over by machines. In a survey, almost three out of four executives see EI as a must-have skill for the workplace in the future as the automatizing of routine tasks bumps up against the impossibility of creating effective AI for activities that require emotional skill.

Education must focus on the trunk of the tree of knowledge, revealing the ways in which the branches, twigs, and leaves all emerge from a common core. Tools for thinking stem from this core, providing a common language with which practitioners in different fields may share their experience of the process of innovation and discover links between their creative activities. When the same terms are employed across the curriculum, students begin to link different subjects and classes. If they practice abstracting in writing class, if they work on abstracting in painting or drawing class, and if, in all cases, they call it abstracting, they begin to understand how to think beyond disciplinary boundaries. They see how to transform their thoughts from one mode of conception and expression to another. Linking the disciplines comes naturally when the terms and tools are presented as part of a universal imagination.

New words and expressions emerge continually in response to new situations, ideas and feelings. The Oxford English Dictionary publishes supplements of new words and expressions that have entered the language. Some people deplore this kind of thing and see it as a drift from correct English. But it was only in the eighteenth century that any attempt was made to formalize spelling and punctuation of English at all. The language we speak in the twenty-first century would be virtually unintelligible to Shakespeare, and so would his way of speaking to us. Alvin Toffler estimated that Shakespeare would probably only understand about 250,000 of the 450,000 words in general use in the English language now. In other words, so to speak, if Shakespeare were to materialize in London today he would understand, on average, only five out of every nine words in our vocabulary.

The graph above shows the average number of students per teacher in public elementary and secondary schools across selected countries in 2019. Belgium was the only country with a smaller number of students per teacher than the OECD average in both public elementary and secondary schools. In both public elementary and secondary schools, the average number of students per teacher was the largest in Mexico. In public elementary schools, there was a smaller number of students per teacher on average in Germany than in Japan, whereas the reverse was true in public secondary schools. The average number of students per teacher in public secondary schools in Germany was less than half that in the United Kingdom. Of the five countries, Mexico was the only country with more students per teacher in public secondary schools than in public elementary schools.

Born in 1627 in Black Notley, Essex, England, John Ray was the son of the village blacksmith. At 16, he went to Cambridge University, where he studied widely and lectured on topics from Greek to mathematics, before joining the priesthood in 1660. To recover from an illness in 1650, he had taken to nature walks and developed an interest in botany. Accompanied by his wealthy student and supporter Francis Willughby, Ray toured Britain and Europe in the 1660s, studying and collecting plants and animals. He married Margaret Oakley in 1673 and, after leaving Willughby's household, lived quietly in Black Notley to the age of 77. He spent his later years studying samples in order to assemble plant and animal catalogues. He wrote more than twenty works on theology and his travels, as well as on plants and their form and function.

《Peace Marathon Festival》 The Peace Marathon Festival will be held to promote world peace and share compassion for people in need. Join us to enjoy running and make a better world. When & Where ㆍSunday, September 3, 2023 (Start time: 10 a.m.) ㆍCivic Stadium Participation Fee & Qualification ㆍFull & Half: $30 (20 years or older) ㆍ10 km & 5 km: $15 (No age limit) Registration ㆍThe number of participants is limited to 1,000. (First come, first served.) ㆍOnline only at ipmarathon.com Notes ㆍSouvenirs and medals will be given to all participants. ㆍChanging rooms will be available at no charge. ㆍWater will be provided every 2.5 km and at the finish line.

《Out to Lunch》 Do you want to enjoy an afternoon with tasty food and great music? 'Out to Lunch' is the perfect event to meet your needs! Come and enjoy this event held in Caras Park in downtown Missoula! Dates & Times ㆍEvery Wednesday in June, 12 p.m. 3 p.m. Highlights ㆍ10% discount at all food trucks including Diamond Ice Cream ㆍLive music performance of the new group Cello Brigade ㆍFace-painting and water balloon fight for kids Notices ㆍBring your own lawn chairs and blankets. ㆍDispose of your waste properly. ㆍDrinking alcoholic beverages is strictly banned.

Research psychologists often work with self-report data, made up of participants' verbal accounts of their behavior. This is the case whenever questionnaires, interviews, or personality inventories are used to measure variables. Self-report methods can be quite useful. They take advantage of the fact that people have a unique opportunity to observe themselves full-time. However, self-reports can be plagued by several kinds of distortion. One of the most problematic of these distortions is the social desirability bias, which is a tendency to give socially approved answers to questions about oneself. Subjects who are influenced by this bias work overtime trying to create a favorable impression, especially when subjects are asked about sensitive issues. For example, many survey respondents will report that they voted in an election or gave to a charity when in fact it is possible to determine that they did not.

Over the past several decades, there have been some agreements to reduce the debt of poor nations, but other economic challenges (like trade barriers) remain. Nontariff trade measures, such as quotas, subsidies, and restrictions on exports, are increasingly prevalent and may be enacted for policy reasons having nothing to do with trade. However, they have a discriminatory effect on exports from countries that lack the resources to comply with requirements of nontariff measures imposed by rich nations. For example, the huge subsidies that rich nations give to their farmers make it very difficult for farmers in the rest of the world to compete with them. Another example would be domestic health or safety regulations, which, though not specifically targeting imports, could impose significant costs on foreign manufacturers seeking to conform to the importer's market. Industries in developing markets may have more difficulty absorbing these additional costs.

In the course of his research on business strategy and the environment, Michael Porter noticed a peculiar pattern: Businesses seemed to be profiting from regulation. He also discovered that the stricter regulations were prompting more innovation than the weaker ones. The Dutch flower industry provides an illustration. For many years, the companies producing Holland's world-renowned tulips and other cut flowers were also contaminating the country's water and soil with fertilizers and pesticides. In 1991, the Dutch government adopted a policy designed to cut pesticide use in half by 2000 ― a goal they ultimately achieved. Facing increasingly strict regulation, greenhouse growers realized they had to develop new methods if they were going to maintain product quality with fewer pesticides. In response, they shifted to a cultivation method that circulates water in closed-loop systems and grows flowers in a rock wool substrate. The new system not only reduced the pollution released into the environment; it also increased profits by giving companies greater control over growing conditions.

It's hard to pay more for the speedy but highly skilled person, simply because there's less effort being observed. Two researchers once did a study in which they asked people how much they would pay for data recovery. They found that people would pay a little more for a greater quantity of rescued data, but what they were most sensitive to was the number of hours the technician worked. When the data recovery took only a few minutes, willingness to pay was low, but when it took more than a week to recover the same amount of data, people were willing to pay much more. Think about it: They were willing to pay more for the slower service with the same outcome. Fundamentally, when we value effort over outcome, we're paying for incompetence. Although it is actually irrational, we feel more rational, and more comfortable, paying for incompetence.

In adolescence many of us had the experience of falling under the sway of a great book or writer. We became entranced by the novel ideas in the book, and because we were so open to influence, these early encounters with exciting ideas sank deeply into our minds and became part of our own thought processes, affecting us decades after we absorbed them. Such influences enriched our mental landscape, and in fact our intelligence depends on the ability to absorb the lessons and ideas of those who are older and wiser. Just as the body tightens with age, however, so does the mind. And just as our sense of weakness and vulnerability motivated the desire to learn, so does our creeping sense of superiority slowly close us off to new ideas and influences. Some may advocate that we all become more skeptical in the modern world, but in fact a far greater danger comes from the increasing closing of the mind that burdens us as individuals as we get older, and seems to be burdening our culture in general.

Many people look for safety and security in popular thinking. They figure that if a lot of people are doing something, then it must be right. It must be a good idea. If most people accept it, then it probably represents fairness, equality, compassion, and sensitivity, right? Not necessarily. Popular thinking said the earth was the center of the universe, yet Copernicus studied the stars and planets and proved mathematically that the earth and the other planets in our solar system revolved around the sun. Popular thinking said surgery didn't require clean instruments, yet Joseph Lister studied the high death rates in hospitals and introduced antiseptic practices that immediately saved lives. Popular thinking said that women shouldn't have the right to vote, yet people like Emmeline Pankhurst and Susan B. Anthony fought for and won that right. We must always remember there is a huge difference between acceptance and intelligence. People may say that there's safety in numbers, but that's not always true.

Before getting licensed to drive a cab in London, a person has to pass an incredibly difficult test with an intimidating name - The Knowledge. The test involves memorizing the layout of more than 20,000 streets in the Greater London area - a feat that involves an incredible amount of memory resources. In fact, fewer than 50 percent of the people who sign up for taxi driver training pass the test, even after spending two or three years studying for it! And as it turns out, the brains of London cabbies are different from non-cab-driving humans in ways that reflect their herculean memory efforts. In fact, the part of the brain that has been most frequently associated with spatial memory, the tail of the sea horse-shaped brain region called the hippocampus, is bigger than average in these taxi drivers.

When evaluating a policy, people tend to concentrate on how the policy will fix some particular problem while ignoring or downplaying other effects it may have. Economists often refer to this situation as The Law of Unintended Consequences. For instance, suppose that you impose a tariff on imported steel in order to protect the jobs of domestic steelworkers. If you impose a high enough tariff, their jobs will indeed be protected from competition by foreign steel companies. But an unintended consequence is that the jobs of some autoworkers will be lost to foreign competition. Why? The tariff that protects steelworkers raises the price of the steel that domestic automobile makers need to build their cars. As a result, domestic automobile manufacturers have to raise the prices of their cars, making them relatively less attractive than foreign cars. Raising prices tends to reduce domestic car sales, so some domestic autoworkers lose their jobs.

Species that are found in only one area are called endemic species and are especially vulnerable to extinction. They exist on islands and in other unique small areas, especially in tropical rain forests where most species are highly specialized. One example is the brilliantly colored golden toad once found only in a small area of lush rain forests in Costa Rica's mountainous region. Despite living in the country's well-protected Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve, by 1989, the golden toad had apparently become extinct. Much of the moisture that supported its rain forest habitat came in the form of moisture-laden clouds blowing in from the Caribbean Sea. But warmer air from global climate change caused these clouds to rise, depriving the forests of moisture, and the habitat for the golden toad and many other species dried up. The golden toad appears to be one of the first victims of climate change caused largely by global warming.

The fundamental nature of the experimental method is manipulation and control. Scientists manipulate a variable of interest, and see if there's a difference. At the same time, they attempt to control for the potential effects of all other variables. The importance of controlled experiments in identifying the underlying causes of events cannot be overstated. In the real-uncontrolled-world, variables are often correlated. For example, people who take vitamin supplements may have different eating and exercise habits than people who don't take vitamins. As a result, if we want to study the health effects of vitamins, we can't merely observe the real world, since any of these factors (the vitamins, diet, or exercise) may affect health. Rather, we have to create a situation that doesn't actually occur in the real world. That's just what scientific experiments do. They try to separate the naturally occurring relationship in the world by manipulating one specific variable at a time, while holding everything else constant.

Events or experiences that are out of ordinary tend to be remembered better because there is nothing competing with them when your brain tries to access them from its storehouse of remembered events. In other words, the reason it can be difficult to remember what you ate for breakfast two Thursdays ago is that there was probably nothing special about that Thursday or that particular breakfast ― consequently, all your breakfast memories combine together into a sort of generic impression of a breakfast. Your memory merges similar events not only because it's more efficient to do so, but also because this is fundamental to how we learn things ― our brains extract abstract rules that tie experiences together. This is especially true for things that are routine. If your breakfast is always the same ― cereal with milk, a glass of orange juice, and a cup of coffee for instance ― there is no easy way for your brain to extract the details from one particular breakfast. Ironically, then, for behaviors that are routinized, you can remember the generic content of the behavior (such as the things you ate, since you always eat the same thing), but particulars to that one instance can be very difficult to call up (such as the sound of a garbage truck going by or a bird that passed by your window) unless they were especially distinctive. On the other hand, if you did something unique that broke your routine ― perhaps you had leftover pizza for breakfast and spilled tomato sauce on your dress shirt ― you are more likely to remember it.

Henrietta is one of the greatest queens of song. She had to go through a severe struggle before she attained the enviable position as the greatest singer Germany had produced. At the beginning of her career she was hissed off a Vienna stage by the friends of her rival, Amelia. But in spite of this defeat, Henrietta endured until all Europe was at her feet. Many years later, when Henrietta was at the height of her fame, one day she was riding through the streets of Berlin. Soon she came across a little girl leading a blind woman. She was touched by the woman's helplessness, and she impulsively beckoned the child to her, saying Come here, my child. Who is that you are leading by the hand? The answer was, That's my mother, Amelia Steininger. She used to be a great singer, but she lost her voice, and she cried so much about it that now she can't see anymore. Henrietta inquired their address and then told the child, Tell your mother an old acquaintance will call on her this afternoon. She searched out their place and undertook the care of both mother and daughter. At her request, a skilled doctor tried to restore Amelia's sight, but it was in vain. But Henrietta's kindness to her former rival did not stop here. The next week she gave a benefit concert for the poor woman, and it was said that on that occasion Henrietta sang as she had never sung before. And who can doubt that with the applause of that vast audience there was mingled the applause of the angels in heaven who rejoice over the good deeds of those below?