Dear Residents, We truly value and appreciate all of our residents, including those with pets. We believe that allowing people to live with their pets enriches their lives. While we encourage you to enjoy your pets, we also want to ensure that you do not do so at the expense of your neighbors or your community. We have received reports that some residents have been disturbed by noise from dogs barking. Excessive barking by dogs disrupts everyone within hearing, particularly those who are elderly or sick or who have small children. We kindly ask that you keep your dogs' noise levels to a minimum. Thank you for your assistance with this. Regards, Conway Forest Apartments Management Office

Meghan looked up and saw angry gray clouds rolling across the water. The storm had turned and was coming her way. She stood up and reached for her sandals. That's when she spotted the dog splashing around in the middle of the lake. At first she thought he was playing. She watched for a second or two, then realized the dog wasn't playing. He was trying to keep from going under. With her heart pounding like a trip-hammer, she ran into the water and started swimming toward the dog. Before she got to the dog, the rain started. She saw the dog, and seconds later he was gone. She pushed forward frantically, her arms reaching out in long strokes, her legs kicking harder and faster.

Children may develop imaginary friends around three or four years of age. Imaginary friends are only a concern if children replace all social interactions with pretend friends. As long as children are developing socially with other children, then imaginary friends are beneficial. Parents often will need reassurance about imaginary friends; they should be respectful of the pretend friends, as well as of their child. Children who create imaginary friends should never be teased, humiliated, or ridiculed in any way. Parents may tire of including the friends in daily activities, such as setting an extra plate at dinner, but they should be reassured that the imaginary friends stage will pass. Until then, imaginary friends should be respected and welcomed by parents because they signify a child's developing imagination.

If creators knew when they were on their way to fashioning a masterpiece, their work would progress only forward: they would halt their idea-generation efforts as they struck gold. But in fact, they backtrack, returning to versions that they had earlier discarded as inadequate. In Beethoven's most celebrated work, the Fifth Symphony, he scrapped the conclusion of the first movement because it felt too short, only to come back to it later. Had Beethoven been able to distinguish an extraordinary from an ordinary work, he would have accepted his composition immediately as a hit. When Picasso was painting his famous Guernica in protest of fascism, he produced 79 different drawings. Many of the images in the painting were based on his early sketches, not the later variations. If Picasso could judge his creations as he produced them, he would get consistently warmer and use the later drawings. But in reality, it was just as common that he got colder.

The psychology professor Dr. Kelly Lambert's research explains that keeping what she calls the effort-driven rewards circuit well engaged helps you deal with challenges in the environment around you or in your emotional life more effectively and efficiently. Doing hands-on activities that produce results you can see and touch ― such as knitting a scarf, cooking from scratch, or tending a garden ― fuels the reward circuit so that it functions optimally. She argues that the documented increase in depression among Americans may be directly correlated with the decline of purposeful physical activity. When we work with our hands, it increases the release of the neurochemicals dopamine and serotonin, both responsible for generating positive emotions. She also explains that working with our hands gives us a greater sense of control over our environment and more connection to the world around us. All of which contributes to a reduction in stress and anxiety and builds resilience against the onset of depression.

It has long been held that the capacity for laughter is a peculiarly human characteristic. The witty Lucian of Samosata (2nd century A.D.) noted that the way to distinguish a man from a donkey is that one laughs and the other does not. In all societies humor is important not only in individual communication but also as a molding force of social groups, reinforcing their norms and regulating behavior. Each particular time, each era, in fact each moment, has its own condition and themes for laughter... because of the major preoccupations, concerns, interests, activities, relations, and mode prevailing at the time. The ultimate goal of anyone who studies another culture, such as ancient Greece, is to understand the people themselves who were more than the sum total of monuments, historical incidents, or social groupings. One way to approach this goal directly is to study the culture's humor. As Goethe aptly observed: Men show their characters in nothing more clearly than in what they think laughable.

Since the early 1980s, Black Friday has been a kind of unofficial U.S. holiday marking the beginning of the holiday season and, consequently, the most profitable time for retailers in the year. But in recent years, a new movement has come to light, adding a more ecological philosophy. The movement is called Green Friday, and it seeks to raise awareness about the damage that Black Friday brings to the environment. Think of the carbon emissions caused by driving to the mall, the shipping of millions of items around the world, the plastic waste produced by packaging, and even the long-term waste produced by mindlessly buying things we don't need. Green Friday is about changing the way we see this day and switching our mindset from buy, buy, buy to finding alternative ways to give gifts during the holiday season so we don't cause further damage to the Earth. Even if only a small percentage of the population makes the switch, it'll mean great things for the environment.

The tables above show the materials landfilled as municipal waste in the U.S. in 2000 and 2017. The total amount of materials landfilled in 2017 was smaller than in 2000. While paper was the material most landfilled as municipal waste in 2000, plastics were the most landfilled material in 2017. In 2000, metals and wood were the third and fourth most landfilled materials, respectively, and this remained the same in 2017. More glass was landfilled than textiles in 2000, but more textiles were landfilled than glass in 2017. The amount of textiles landfilled in 2017 was less than twice that in 2000.

Vera Rubin was born in 1928 in Philadelphia and grew up in Washington, D.C. It was in Washington, D.C. that she started to develop an interest in astronomy. She earned a master's degree from Cornell University in 1951 and a doctor's degree from Georgetown University in 1954. At the age of 22, she made headlines and shocked scientists with her theory about the motion of galaxies. In 1965, Rubin started as a researcher at the Carnegie Institution and became the first woman permitted to use the Hale Telescope. She made groundbreaking observations that provided evidence for the existence of a vast amount of dark matter in the universe. She won many prizes for her work, but never the Nobel Prize. She died in 2016 and is celebrated as someone who worked to lead the way for women in astronomy and physics.

《2020 Game-Coding Workshop》 Turn your children's love for computer games into a skill. This gamecoding workshop will teach them to use blockbased coding software to create their own games! Date & Time : ⦁Saturday, December 12th, 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm Registration : ⦁Closes Friday, November 27th ⦁Participation fee is $30 (free for Lansing Kids Club members). ⦁Sign up in person at Kid's Coding Center or online at www.lanskidscoding.com. Requirements : ⦁Open only to children 9 to 12 years old ⦁Laptops will not be provided. Participants must bring their own. ⦁No prior coding knowledge is required. Please visit our website for more information.

《Young Filmmakers Contest》 Join our annual Young Filmmakers Contest, and demonstrate your filmmaking skills! ◇ Contest Rules ⦁Contest is open only to high school students. ⦁Total running time of each entry must be less than fifteen minutes. ⦁Participants must choose one of the following two topics: Family | Friendship ◇ Submission ⦁Submit by Wednesday, September 16th. ⦁Do not mail entries to our offices. Only submissions uploaded to our official Young Filmmakers Contest website will be accepted. ◇ Prizes ⦁1st place: $300 | 2nd place: $200 | 3rd place: $100 ⦁All winning entries will be posted on the official website. If you have any questions, please visit www.2020yfc.org.

All social interactions require some common ground upon which the involved parties can coordinate their behavior. In the interdependent groups in which humans and other primates live, individuals must have even greater common ground to establish and maintain social relationships. This common ground is morality. This is why morality often is defined as a shared set of standards for judging right and wrong in the conduct of social relationships. No matter how it is conceptualized ― whether as trustworthiness, cooperation, justice, or caring ― morality is always about the treatment of people in social relationships. This is likely why there is surprising agreement across a wide range of perspectives that a shared sense of morality is necessary to social relations. Evolutionary biologists, sociologists, and philosophers all seem to agree with social psychologists that the interdependent relationships within groups that humans depend on are not possible without a shared morality.

Spine-tingling ghost stories are fun to tell if they are really scary, and even more so if you claim that they are true. People get a thrill from passing on those stories. The same applies to miracle stories. If a rumor of a miracle gets written down in a book, the rumor becomes hard to challenge, especially if the book is ancient. If a rumor is old enough, it starts to be called a tradition instead, and then people believe it all the more. This is rather odd because you might think they would realize that older rumors have had more time to get distorted than younger rumors that are close in time to the alleged events themselves. Elvis Presley and Michael Jackson lived too recently for traditions to have grown up, so not many people believe stories like Elvis seen on Mars.

Firms in almost every industry tend to be clustered. Suppose you threw darts at random on a map of the United States. You'd find the holes left by the darts to be more or less evenly distributed across the map. But the real map of any given industry looks nothing like that; it looks more as if someone had thrown all the darts in the same place. This is probably in part because of reputation; buyers may be suspicious of a software firm in the middle of the cornfields. It would also be hard to recruit workers if every time you needed a new employee you had to persuade someone to move across the country, rather than just poach one from your neighbor. There are also regulatory reasons: zoning laws often try to concentrate dirty industries in one place and restaurants and bars in another. Finally, people in the same industry often have similar preferences (computer engineers like coffee, financiers show off with expensive bottles of wine). Concentration makes it easier to provide the amenities they like.

When we are emotionally charged, we often use anger to hide our more primary and deeper emotions, such as sadness and fear, which doesn't allow for true resolution to occur. Separating yourself from an emotionally upsetting situation gives you the space you need to better understand what you are truly feeling so you can more clearly articulate your emotions in a logical and less emotional way. A timeout also helps spare innocent bystanders. When confronted with situations that don't allow us to deal with our emotions or that cause us to suppress them, we may transfer those feelings to other people or situations at a later point. For instance, if you had a bad day at work, you may suppress your feelings at the office, only to find that you release them by getting into a fight with your kids or spouse when you get home later that evening. Clearly, your anger didn't originate at home, but you released it there. When you take the appropriate time to digest and analyze your feelings, you can mitigate hurting or upsetting other people who have nothing to do with the situation.

A recent study shows that dogs appear to form mental images of people's faces. Scientists placed 28 dogs in front of a computer monitor blocked by an opaque screen, then played a recording of the dog's human guardian or a stranger saying the dog's name five times through speakers in the monitor. Finally, the screen was removed to reveal either the face of the dog's human companion or a stranger's face. The dogs' reactions were videotaped. Naturally, the dogs were attentive to the sound of their name, and they typically stared about six seconds at the face after the screen was removed. But they spent significantly more time gazing at a strange face after they had heard the familiar voice of their guardian. That they paused for an extra second or two suggests that they realized something was wrong. The conclusion drawn is that dogs form a picture in their mind, and that they can think about it and make predictions based on that picture. And, like us, they are puzzled when what they see or hear doesn't match what they were expecting.

In the current landscape, social enterprises tend to rely either on grant capital (e.g., grants, donations, or project funding) or commercial financing products (e.g., bank loans). Ironically, many social enterprises at the same time report of significant drawbacks related to each of these two forms of financing. Many social enterprises are for instance reluctant to make use of traditional commercial finance products, fearing that they might not be able to pay back the loans. In addition, a significant number of social enterprise leaders report that relying too much on grant funding can be a risky strategy since individual grants are time limited and are not reliable in the long term. Grant funding can also lower the incentive for leaders and employees to professionalize the business aspects, thus leading to unhealthy business behavior. In other words, there seems to be a substantial need among social enterprises for alternatives to the traditional forms of financing.

The major oceans are all interconnected, so that their geographical boundaries are less clear than those of the continents. As a result, their biotas show fewer clear differences than those on land. The oceans themselves are continually moving because the water within each ocean basin slowly rotates. These moving waters carry marine organisms from place to place, and also help the dispersal of their young or larvae. Furthermore, the gradients between the environments of different areas of ocean water mass are very gradual and often extend over wide areas that are inhabited by a great variety of organisms of differing ecological tolerances. There are no firm boundaries within the open oceans although there may be barriers to the movement of organisms.

When a change in the environment occurs, there is a relative increase or decrease in the rate at which the neurons fire, which is how intensity is coded. Furthermore, relativity operates to calibrate our sensations. For example, if you place one hand in hot water and the other in iced water for some time before immersing them both into lukewarm water, you will experience conflicting sensations of temperature because of the relative change in the receptors registering hot and cold. Although both hands are now in the same water, one feels that it is colder and the other feels warmer because of the relative change from prior experience. This process, called adaptation, is one of the organizing principles operating throughout the central nervous system. It explains why you can't see well inside a dark room if you have come in from a sunny day. Your eyes have to become accustomed to the new level of luminance. Adaptation explains why apples taste sour after eating sweet chocolate and why traffic seems louder in the city if you normally live in the country.

When an important change takes place in your life, observe your response. If you resist accepting the change it is because you are afraid; afraid of losing something. Perhaps you might lose your position, property, possession, or money. The change might mean that you lose privileges or prestige. Perhaps with the change you lose the closeness of a person or a place. In life, all these things come and go and then others appear, which will also go. It is like a river in constant movement. If we try to stop the flow, we create a dam; the water stagnates and causes a pressure which accumulates inside us. To learn to let go, to not cling and allow the flow of the river, is to live without resistances; being the creators of constructive changes that bring about improvements and widen our horizons.

Some resources, decisions, or activities are important (highly valuable on average) while others are pivotal (small changes make a big difference). Consider how two components of a car relate to a consumer's purchase decision: tires and interior design. Which adds more value on average? The tires. They are essential to the car's ability to move, and they impact both safety and performance. Yet tires generally do not influence purchase decisions because safety standards guarantee that all tires will be very safe and reliable. Differences in interior features ― optimal sound system, portable technology docks, number and location of cup holders ― likely have far more effect on the consumer's buying decision. In terms of the overall value of an automobile, you can't drive without tires, but you can drive without cup holders and a portable technology dock. Interior features, however, clearly have a greater impact on the purchase decision. In our language, the tires are important, but the interior design is pivotal.

In the West, an individual composer writes the music long before it is performed. The patterns and melodies we hear are pre-planned and intended. Some African tribal music, however, results from collaboration by the players on the spur of the moment. The patterns heard, whether they are the silences when all players rest on a beat or the accented beats when all play together, are not planned but serendipitous. When an overall silence appears on beats 4 and 13, it is not because each musician is thinking, On beats 4 and 13, I will rest. Rather, it occurs randomly as the patterns of all the players converge upon a simultaneous rest. The musicians are probably as surprised as their listeners to hear the silences at beats 4 and 13. Surely that surprise is one of the joys tribal musicians experience in making their music.

Some researchers at Sheffield University recruited 129 hobbyists to look at how the time spent on their hobbies shaped their work life. To begin with, the team measured the seriousness of each participant's hobby, asking them to rate their agreement with statements like I regularly train for this activity, and also assessed how similar the demands of their job and hobby were. Then, each month for seven months, participants recorded how many hours they had dedicated to their activity, and completed a scale measuring their belief in their ability to effectively do their job, or their self-efficacy. The researchers found that when participants spent longer than normal doing their leisure activity, their belief in their ability to perform their job increased. But this was only the case when they had a serious hobby that was dissimilar to their job. When their hobby was both serious and similar to their job, then spending more time on it actually decreased their self-efficacy. -> Research suggests that spending more time on serious hobbies can boost confidence at work if the hobbies and the job are sufficiently different.

U.S. commercial aviation has long had an extremely effective system for encouraging pilots to submit reports of errors. The program has resulted in numerous improvements to aviation safety. It wasn't easy to establish: pilots had severe self-induced social pressures against admitting to errors. Moreover, to whom would they report them? Certainly not to their employers. Not even to the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA), for then they would probably be punished. The solution was to let the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) set up a voluntary accident reporting system whereby pilots could submit semi-anonymous reports of errors they had made or observed in others. Once NASA personnel had acquired the necessary information, they would detach the contact information from the report and mail it back to the pilot. This meant that NASA no longer knew who had reported the error, which made it impossible for the airline companies or the FAA (which enforced penalties against errors) to find out who had submitted the report. If the FAA had independently noticed the error and tried to invoke a civil penalty or certificate suspension, the receipt of self-report automatically exempted the pilot from punishment. When a sufficient number of similar errors had been collected, NASA would analyze them and issue reports and recommendations to the airlines and to the FAA. These reports also helped the pilots realize that their error reports were valuable tools for increasing safety.

I was on a train in Switzerland. The train came to a stop, and the conductor's voice over the loudspeaker delivered a message in German, then Italian, then French. I had made the mistake of not learning any of those languages before my vacation. After the announcement, everyone started getting off the train, and an old woman saw I was confused and stressed. She came up to me. She spoke some English, and she told me that an accident had happened on the tracks. She asked me where I was trying to get to, then she got off the train and went to a woman in the ticket booth. The old woman got a rail map and timetable from her and came back to tell me that we'd have to hop trains three or four times to get there. I was really glad she was headed the same way because it would have been hopeless for me to figure it out on my own. So we went from one train station to the next, getting to know each other along the way. It was a 2.5hour journey in total, and when we finally made it to the destination, we got off and said our goodbyes. I had made it just in time to catch my train to Rome, and she told me she had a train to catch too. I asked her how much farther she had to go, and it turned out her home was two hours back the other way. She had jumped from train to train and traveled the whole way just to make sure I made it. You are the nicest person I've ever met, I said. She smiled gently and hugged me and told me I'd better hurry off so I wouldn't miss my train. This woman spent her entire day sitting on trains taking her hours away from her home just to help out a confused tourist visiting her country. No matter how many countries I visit or sites I see, I always say the most beautiful country in the world is Switzerland.