It has been a privilege to serve in this company for the past four years. The experiences and insights I have gained as a safety manager have been invaluable. However, after careful consideration, I have accepted a position at another company and will be leaving Lewis Ltd. This was not an easy decision to make, but I am confident that my new role will help me with my future goals. My last day of work will be on April 30th. I will do all I can to assist in a smooth transfer of duties. I wish both you and Lewis Ltd. every good fortune.

The piece of wreckage Anna held on to that served as a life preserver had a window. Now that there was light, she looked through it and down into the water. She wished she hadn't. She spied dark shapes moving beneath her. What could they be? Fish? Sharks? Anna shook with fear, her blood running cold. The last bits of strength were draining away from her arms and upper body. She did not know how much longer she could hang on, but then Anna glanced up and couldn't believe what she saw. A fishing boat was approaching over the big waves. After being in the water for 3 hours, she was finally rescued. When she got on the boat, she felt a sense of relief spread through her body.

By definition, adult learners have a self-concept of being in charge of their own lives and have a need to be seen and treated as being capable of taking responsibility for their own learning. As such, learners need to be given the freedom and autonomy to assume responsibility for their own choices and to be proactive in making decisions that contribute to their educational experiences. Rather than perform the role of the sage on the stage, in working with adult learners, the instructor's role should be the guide on the side - a facilitator of learning, and a coach or mentor who works alongside their learners to promote achievement and academic success. The facilitator role extends beyond course delivery, and includes the broader pedagogical tasks that will support learners on their growth such as helping them effectively manage their time; fostering engagement; assigning meaningful and relevant learning activities; and so on.

That perception is a construction is not true just of one's perception of sensory input, such as visual and auditory information. It is true of your social perceptions as well ― your perceptions of the people you meet, the food you eat, and even of the products you buy. For example, in a study of wine, when wines were tasted blind, there was little or no correlation between the ratings of a wine's taste and its cost, but there was a significant correlation when the wines were labeled by price. That wasn't because the subjects consciously believed that the higher-priced wines should be the better ones and thus revised whatever opinion they had accordingly. Or rather, it wasn't true just at the conscious level. We know because as the subjects were tasting the wine, the researchers were imaging their brain activity, and the imaging showed that drinking what they believed was an expensive glass of wine really did activate their centers of taste for pleasure more than drinking a glass of the same wine that had been labeled as cheaper. That's related to the placebo effect. Like pain, taste is not just the product of sensory signals; it depends also on psychological factors: you don't just taste the wine; you taste its price.

Though it may seem extreme, a multilingual can quite literally feel differently about people, events or things when using one language versus another. The likelihood of being rattled by curse words or taboo words changes across native and second languages. Speakers of multiple languages not only report feeling different, but their bodies have different physiological reactions and their minds make different emotionally driven decisions across languages. The exact relationship between positive and negative emotions and language varies across people. For some, the second language carries more positive connotations because it is associated with freedom, opportunity, financial well-being and escape from persecution, whereas the native language is associated with poverty and hardship. For others, the opposite is true ― the second language is associated with post-immigration challenges, discrimination and lack of close relationships, whereas the native language is associated with family, friends and parental love. And many are somewhere in between, having a mix of positive and negative experiences associated with each language.

Sociologist Brooke Harrington said if there was an E=mc2 of social science, it would be SD > PD, social death is more frightening than physical death. This is why we feel deeply threatened when a new idea challenges the ones that have become part of our identity. For some ideas, the ones that identify us as members of a group, we don't reason as individuals; we reason as a member of a tribe. We want to seem trustworthy, and reputation management as a trustworthy individual often overrides most other concerns, even our own mortality. This is not entirely irrational. A human alone in this world faces a lot of difficulty, but being alone in the world before modern times was almost certainly a death sentence. So we carry with us an innate drive to form groups, join groups, remain in those groups, and oppose other groups. But once you can identify them, you start favoring us; so much so that given a choice between an outcome that favors both groups a lot or one that favors both much less but still favors yours more than theirs, that's the one you will pick.

Distance in time is like distance in space. People matter even if they live thousands of miles away. Likewise, they matter even if they live thousands of years hence. In both cases, it's easy to mistake distance for unreality, to treat the limits of what we can see as the limits of the world. But just as the world does not stop at our doorstep or our country's borders, neither does it stop with our generation, or the next. These ideas are common sense. A popular proverb says, A society grows great when old men plant trees under whose shade they will never sit. When we dispose of radioactive waste, we don't say, Who cares if this poisons people centuries from now? Similarly, few of us who care about climate change or pollution do so solely for the sake of people alive today. We build museums and parks and bridges that we hope will last for generations; we invest in schools and long-term scientific projects; we preserve paintings, traditions, languages; we protect beautiful places. In many cases, we don't draw clear lines between our concerns for the present and the future ― both are in play.

The above graph shows the pet population changes from 1980 to 2020. The population of pet dogs was higher than or equal to that of pet cats except for the year 2000. In 1990, the difference between the population of pet dogs and pet cats was less than 1 million. In 2020, the population of pet dogs reached its highest point, yet it was still less than double the number of pet dogs in 1980. The population of pet cats reached its highest population of 8 million in 2000, and it was the same in 2010. Although the population of pet cats decreased from 2010 to 2020, the population of pet cats in 2020 still exceeded that of pet dogs in 2020.

Ilya Prigogine was born into a Jewish family in Moscow. In 1921, he and his family left Russia, eventually settling in Belgium. His parents encouraged him to become a lawyer, and he first studied law at the Free University of Brussels. It was then that he became interested in psychology and behavioral research. In turn, reading about these subjects sparked his interest in chemistry since chemical processes affect the mind and body. He eventually dropped out of law school. Prigogine then studied chemistry and physics at the same time at the Free University of Brussels. He obtained the equivalent of a master's degree in both fields in 1939, and he obtained a PhD in chemistry in 1941 at the Free University of Brussels, where he accepted the position of professor in 1947. Considered one of the founders of complexity science, Ilya Prigogine was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1977.

Electronic Safe User Manual OPENING THE SAFE FOR THE FIRST TIME Upon first use, users should open the safe with the emergency key. INSERTING THE BATTERIES ㆍInsert four AA batteries, and the green light will flash. ㆍIf both the green light and the red light are on, replace the batteries. SETTING A PASSWORD ㆍWith the door open, press the reset button. Then, input a four-digit password and press the enter button. ㆍWhen the new password is set, the green light will flash twice. OPENING THE DOOR WITH A PASSWORD Input your password and press the enter button. CAUTION: A wrong password input will set off an alarm.

World Poetry Day Competition In honor of World Poetry Day, let's experience the power of words with our poetry competition! Competition Details ㆍTheme: Unexpected Moments ㆍDeadline: March 21, 2024 (World Poetry Day) ㆍAge: Only those who are under age 18 can participate. Special Opportunities ㆍPoetry Workshop: All participants can join our poetry workshop led by well-known poets. How to Participate ㆍCompose your poem inspired by the theme. ㆍYou can submit your piece only through E-mail at administer@worldpoetry.org.

The process of crossing cultures challenges the very basis of who we are as cultural beings. It offers opportunities for new learning and growth. Being uprooted from our home brings us understanding not only of the people and their culture in our new environment, but of ourselves and our home culture. Although the difficulties that can arise from crossing cultures are often shocking, success stories are everywhere. Despite, or rather because of, the suffering and ambivalence we undergo when we cross cultures, we gradually find ourselves uniquely privileged to define ourselves and others anew with clarity and insight that we could not have cultivated without leaving home. Adapting to a new and unfamiliar culture, then, is more than survival. It is a life-changing journey. It is a process of becoming - personal reinvention, transformation, growth, reaching out beyond the boundaries of our own existence. The process does not require that we abandon our former personalities and the cultures into which we were born. Rather, it compels us to find ourselves as if for the first time, particularly those cultural invariants within us - aspects that we hold dear and refuse to compromise.

While it has been found that young children rely exclusively on geometric information to determine the location of an object hidden in a small enclosure, exclusive use of geometry does not occur in larger spaces. Although, in a small room, children failed to incorporate information about nongeometric features (i.e., a blue wall), they used both types of information in a larger room. These findings suggest that geometric and nongeometric information may be combined in a weighted fashion. Geometry may be privileged because it is more stable across time than is nongeometric information. Whether or not nongeometric landmark information is combined with geometry may depend on the ecological validity of nongeometric features; for example, larger features may be more stable and hence more reliable. Further, a variety of mobile animals give more weight to nearer than to farther landmarks in estimation, consistent with Weber's law in which smaller distances would be coded more accurately than larger distances.

From about ages eight through sixteen, our manual dexterity has strengthened through continually improving eye-hand coordination. There is considerable improvement in handwriting skills. We gain mastery over the mechanics of language. We also gradually eliminate the logical gaps in our stories ― characteristic of our earlier stage of perception ― as intense preoccupation with the whole vision gives way to preoccupation with correctness. As a result, our writing and oral storying become increasingly conventional and literal, with an accompanying loss of the spontaneity and originality that characterized our earlier efforts. At this stage our vocabulary is firmly grounded. We use words everyone else uses. We have little need to invent metaphors to communicate. By now we know that a star is a hot gaseous mass floating in space in contrast to our innocent stage, when we noticed, Look that star is like a flower without a stem!

The commonsense understanding of the moral status of altruistic acts conforms to how most of us think about our responsibilities toward others. We tend to get offended when someone else or society determines for us how much of what we have should be given away; we are adults and should have the right to make such decisions for ourselves. Yet, when interviewed, altruists known for making the largest sacrifices - and bringing about the greatest benefits to their recipients - assert just the opposite. They insist that they had absolutely no choice but to act as they did. Organ donors, and everyday citizens who risk their own lives to save others in mortal danger are remarkably consistent in their explicit denials that they have done anything deserving of high praise as well as in their assurance that anyone in their shoes should have done exactly the same thing. To be sure, it seems that the more altruistic someone is, the more they are likely to insist that they have done no more than all of us would be expected to do, lest we shirk our basic moral obligation to humanity.

Epictetus wrote, A man's master is he who is able to confirm or remove whatever that man seeks or shuns. If you depend on no one except yourself to satisfy your desires, you will have no master other than yourself and you will be free. Stoic philosophy was about that ― taking charge of your life, learning to work on those things that are within your power to accomplish or change and not to waste energy on things you cannot. In particular, the Stoics warned against reacting emotionally to what is outside your control. Often, Epictetus argued, it's not our circumstances that get us down but rather the judgments we make about them. Consider anger. We don't get angry at the rain if it spoils our picnic. That would be silly because we can't do anything about the rain. But we often do get angry if someone mistreats us. We usually can't control or change that person any more than we can stop the rain, so that is equally silly. More generally, it is just as pointless to tie our feelings of well-being to altering another individual's behavior as it is to tie them to the weather. Epictetus wrote, If it concerns anything not in our control, be prepared to say that it is nothing to you.

Japanese used to have a color word, ao, that spanned both green and blue. In the modern language, however, ao has come to be restricted mostly to blue shades, and green is usually expressed by the word midori. When the first traffic lights were imported from the United States and installed in Japan in the 1930s, they were just as green as anywhere else. Nevertheless, in common parlance the go light was called ao shingoo, perhaps because the three primary colors on Japanese artists' palettes are traditionally aka(red), kiiro(yellow), and ao. The label ao for a green light did not appear so out of the ordinary at first, because of the remaining associations of the word ao with greenness. But over time, the difference between the green color and the dominant meaning of the word ao began to feel awkward. Nations that are less assertive might have opted for the solution of simply changing the official name of the go light to midori. Not so the Japanese. Rather than alter the name to fit reality, the Japanese government announced in 1973 that reality should be altered to fit the name: henceforth, go lights would be a color that better corresponded to the dominant meaning of ao.

No doubt students collaborating with other speakers of English might encounter language variances, which may interfere with intentionality. To address such disparities, Horner, Lu, Royster, and Trimbur (2011) call for a translingual approach in which language varieties are not perceived as barriers, but as avenues for meaning making. Similarly, Galloway and Rose (2015) study of Global Englishes found that exposure to other Englishes helps normalize language differences. Educators have to work with students to examine phrases, expressions, and other ranges of English language use for their rhetorical and communicative possibilities and not their perceived errors or inferior status. After all, students are constantly reading texts and listening to speakers whose Englishes do not necessarily conform to what is considered standard in their own communities.

Different creative pursuits require varying degrees of unconscious flexible thinking, in combination with varying degrees of the conscious ability to adjust it and shape it through analytical thinking. In music, for example, at one end of the creative spectrum are improvisational artists, such as jazz musicians. They have to be particularly talented at lowering their inhibitions and letting in their unconsciously generated ideas. And although the process of learning the fundamentals of jazz would require a high degree of analytical thought, that thinking style is not as big a factor during the performance. On the other end of the spectrum are those who compose complex forms, such as a symphony or concerto, that require not just imagination but also careful planning and exacting editing. We know, for example, through his letters and the reports of others, that even Mozart's creations did not appear spontaneously, wholly formed in his consciousness, as the myths about him portray. Instead, he spent long, hard hours analyzing and reworking the ideas that arose in his unconscious, much as a scientist does when producing a theory from a germ of insight. In Mozart's own words: I immerse myself in music... I think about it all day long ― I like experimenting ― studying ― reflecting...

Today, historic ideas about integrating nature and urban/suburban space find expression in various interpretations of sustainable urban planning. However, the role of social justice in these approaches remains highly controversial. For example, Landscape Urbanism is a relatively recent planning approach that advocates for native habitat designs that include diverse species and landscapes that require very low resource use. However, critics claim that Landscape Urbanists prioritize aesthetic and ecological concerns over human needs. In contrast, New Urbanism is an approach that was popularized in the 1980s and promotes walkable streets, compact design, and mixed-use developments. But Landscape Urbanists find that these designs do not prioritize the natural environment and often involve diverting streams and disrupting natural wetlands. Still others, such as those advocating for just sustainabilities or complete streets, find that both approaches are overly idealistic and neither pays enough attention to the realities of social dynamics and systemic inequality.

Insurance companies are expected to err on the safe side. They calculate risks thoroughly, carefully picking and choosing the customers they insure. They are boring because their role in the economy is to shield everyone and everything from disastrous loss. Unlike manufacturing, nothing truly revolutionary ever happens in the insurance industry. For centuries, insurers have charged higher premiums to people in high-risk categories such as smokers, male drivers under the age of thirty, and extreme-sports enthusiasts. This type of classification frequently results in biases and outright discrimination against disadvantaged groups. But in the future, real-time data collection will enable insurance companies to charge pay-as-you-drive rates depending on people's actual behavior on the road, as opposed to generalized stereotypes of certain at-risk groups. Bad or high-risk individual drivers will end up paying more for insurance, regardless of whether they are men or women, young or old. The Big Brother connotations are threatening, but many people might agree to the real-time monitoring of their driving behavior if it means lower rates.

Almost all the figurative paintings we are familiar with now are in perspective. They present foreshortened figures and objects that diminish as they move away from the focal point of the painting. A painting in perspective represents how the world looks to a person seeing the scene from a particular position in space. This stands in contrast to earlier figurative art, which had been as focused on representing what the artist knew about the objects and the space he or she was painting as on how they looked. These pictures are beautiful in their own right, but they do not represent scenes as we might see them if we were looking at them. They are also less informative as to the layout of the space they represent. The fact that perspective and information about spatial layout go together reveals something important about seeing. Not only do we see the world through an egocentric frame but we also see it in a way that allows us to extract information about distances to, and sizes of, objects relative to us, and relative to one another.

Brain plasticity is a term we use in neuroscience. Whether intentionally or not, plasticity suggests that the key idea is to mold something once and keep it that way forever: to shape the plastic toy and never change it again. But that's not what the brain does. It carries on remolding itself throughout your life. Think of a developing city, and note the way it grows, improves, and responds to the world around it. Observe where the city builds its truck stops, how it crafts its immigration policies, and how it modifies its education and legal systems. A city is always changing. A city is not designed by urban planners and then immobilized like a plastic object. It continually develops. Just like cities, brains never reach an end point. We spend our lives blossoming toward something, even as the target moves. Consider the feeling of encountering a diary that you wrote many years ago. It represents the thinking, opinions, and viewpoint of someone who was a bit different from who you are now, and that previous person can sometimes border on the unrecognizable. Despite having the same name and the same early history, in the years between inscription and interpretation the narrator has altered. The word plastic can be stretched to fit this notion of ongoing change. -> While some understand brain plasticity to mean permanence upon molding, the brain is actually capable of transformation.

You are the narrator of your own life. The tone and perspective with which you describe each experience generates feelings associated with that narration. For example, if you find yourself constantly assuming, This is hard, I wonder whether I'm going to survive, or It looks like this is going to turn out badly, you'll generate anxious feelings. It's time to restructure the way you think. Underlying this narration are the beliefs that frame your experience and give it meaning. Think of your beliefs as having many layers. On the surface are your automatic thoughts. These are like short tapes that momentarily flash through your mind. Call these automatic thoughts a form of self-talk that you use as you navigate through the day. You produce a wide variety of these automatic thoughts, some consciously and some unconsciously. For example, automatic thoughts that fuel anxiety go something like this: You walk into a room, see a few new people, and say to yourself, Oh no, I don't like this. This is not good. Or, These people will soon find out that I am full of anxiety and will reject me. Automatic thoughts are bad habits that cloud fresh and positive experiences. They can turn a potentially good experience into one fraught with anxiety. If you tell yourself that you are always stressed or full of anxiety before doing something new, that new experience will be tainted by that anxiety.

Once upon a time in the small town of Meadowville, there lived a curious boy named Tommy. Tommy's grandfather, affectionately known as Grandpa Joe, had always been a mysterious figure to him. Grandpa Joe was a man of few words, but his eyes lit up from stories untold. One lazy summer afternoon, while searching the garage, Tommy found an old, forgotten box. As he opened it, the treasure of memories spilled out, including an old baseball card featuring a young Grandpa Joe. Tommy's eyes widened with excitement as he examined the card. In the card, Grandpa Joe stood proudly in a baseball uniform. He was not the quiet person Tommy knew. Intrigued by this discovery, Tommy rushed inside the house to find Grandpa Joe. Hey, Grandpa! I found this cool baseball card of you. Were you a baseball player? he asked, eyes filled with curiosity. A spark of nostalgia lit up Grandpa Joe's eyes as he took the card. Memories flooded back, and he told stories of his youthful days on the baseball field. Grandpa Joe spoke of the thrill of the game and the joy of hitting a home run. Tommy, fascinated by these stories, felt more connected to his grandfather. Eager to learn more, he asked Grandpa Joe to teach him about baseball. They spent afternoons in the backyard as he shared the wisdom of the game with his grandson. Together, they practiced hitting, catching, and even laughed over the mistakes. As they bonded over baseball, the gap between generations closed. Grandpa Joe's eyes no longer held just the twinkle of untold stories; they now radiated warmth and shared memories.