Dear Mr. Bernstein, My name is Thomas Cobb, the marketing director of Calbary Hospital. Our hospital is planning to hold a charity concert on September 18th in the Main Hall of our hospital. We expect it to be helpful in raising money to cover the medical costs of those in need. To make the concert more special, we want to invite you for the opening of the concert. Your reputation as a pianist is well known, and everyone will be very happy to see your performance. Beautiful piano melodies will help create an enjoyable experience for the audience. We look forward to your positive reply. Sincerely, Thomas A. Cobb

As he stepped onto the basketball court, David suddenly thought of the day he had gotten injured last season and froze. He was not sure if he could play as well as before the injury. A serious wrist injury had caused him to miss the rest of the season. Remembering the surgery, he said to himself, I thought my basketball career was completely over. However, upon hearing his fans' wild cheers, he felt his body coming alive and thought, For sure, my fans, friends, and family are looking forward to watching me play today. As soon as the game started, he was filled with energy. The first five shots he attempted went in the basket. I'm back! I got this, he shouted.

We live in a time when everyone seems to be looking for quick and sure solutions. Computer companies have even begun to advertise ways in which computers can replace parents. They are too late - television has already done that. Seriously, however, in every branch of education, including moral education, we make a mistake when we suppose that a particular batch of content or a particular teaching method or a particular configuration of students and space will accomplish our ends. The answer is both harder and simpler. We, parents and teachers, have to live with our children, talk to them, listen to them, enjoy their company, and show them by what we do and how we talk that it is possible to live appreciatively or, at least, nonviolently with most other people.

Flicking the collaboration light switch is something that leaders are uniquely positioned to do, because several obstacles stand in the way of people voluntarily working alone. For one thing, the fear of being left out of the loop can keep them glued to their enterprise social media. Individuals don't want to be ― or appear to be - isolated. For another, knowing what their teammates are doing provides a sense of comfort and security, because people can adjust their own behavior to be in harmony with the group. It's risky to go off on their own to try something new that will probably not be successful right from the start. But even though it feels reassuring for individuals to be hyperconnected, it's better for the organization if they periodically go off and think for themselves and generate diverse ― if not quite mature ― ideas. Thus, it becomes the leader's job to create conditions that are good for the whole by enforcing intermittent interaction even when people wouldn't choose it for themselves, without making it seem like a punishment.

Historically, the professions and society have engaged in a negotiating process intended to define the terms of their relationship. At the heart of this process is the tension between the professions' pursuit of autonomy and the public's demand for accountability. Society's granting of power and privilege to the professions is premised on their willingness and ability to contribute to social well-being and to conduct their affairs in a manner consistent with broader social values. It has long been recognized that the expertise and privileged position of professionals confer authority and power that could readily be used to advance their own interests at the expense of those they serve. As Edmund Burke observed two centuries ago, Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites. Autonomy has never been a one-way street and is never granted absolutely and irreversibly.

In Kant's view, geometrical shapes are too perfect to induce an aesthetic experience. Insofar as they agree with the underlying concept or idea - thus possessing the precision that the ancient Greeks sought and celebrated - geometrical shapes can be grasped, but they do not give rise to emotion, and, most importantly, they do not move the imagination to free and new (mental) lengths. Forms or phenomena, on the contrary, that possess a degree of immeasurability, or that do not appear constrained, stimulate the human imagination - hence their ability to induce a sublime aesthetic experience. The pleasure associated with experiencing immeasurable objects - indefinable or formless objects - can be defined as enjoying one's own emotional and mental activity. Namely, the pleasure consists of being challenged and struggling to understand and decode the phenomenon present to view. Furthermore, part of the pleasure comes from having one's comfort zone (momentarily) violated.

The world has become a nation of laws and governance that has introduced a system of public administration and management to keep order. With this administrative management system, urban institutions of government have evolved to offer increasing levels of services to their citizenry, provided through a taxation process and/or fee for services (e.g., police and fire, street maintenance, utilities, waste management, etc.). Frequently this has displaced citizen involvement. Money for services is not a replacement for citizen responsibility and public participation. Responsibility of the citizen is slowly being supplanted by government being the substitute provider. Consequentially, there is a philosophical and social change in attitude and sense of responsibility of our urban-based society to become involved. The sense of community and associated responsibility of all citizens to be active participants is therefore diminishing. Governmental substitution for citizen duty and involvement can have serious implications. This impedes the nations of the world to be responsive to natural and man-made disasters as part of global preparedness.

The table above shows seven U.S. states ranked by the number of workers added in the solar industry between 2015 and 2020, and provides information on the corresponding growth percentage in each state. During this period, Florida, which ranked first with regard to the number of workers added, exhibited 71% growth. The number of workers added in Utah was more than twice the number of workers added in Minnesota. Regarding Texas, the state showed less than 50% growth. New York added more than 1,900 workers, displaying 24% growth. Among these seven states, Pennsylvania added the lowest number of workers during this period.

Henry Moore (1898 – 1986), one of the most significant British artists of the 20th century, was the seventh child of a coal miner. Henry Moore showed a talent for art from early on in school. After World War I, during which he volunteered for army service, Moore began to study sculpture at the Leeds School of Art. Then, he entered the Royal College of Art in London and earned his degree there. His sculptures, known around the world, present the forms of the body in a unique way. One of his artistic themes was mother-and-child as shown in Madonna and Child at St. Matthew's Church in Northampton. He achieved financial success from his hard work and established the Henry Moore Foundation to support education and promotion of the arts.

《2021 Whir Car Drawing Contest for Kids》 Theme: Family Does your child love cars? Take this opportunity for your child to think about what they love and draw it. They will definitely enjoy and learn from this contest! Details ∙ Ten entries are chosen, and each is awarded a $50 gift certificate. ∙ Drawing skills are not considered in judging. Submission ∙ Take a photo of your child's drawing. ∙ Visit our website (www.whircar4kids.com) and upload the photo by October 3. Note ∙ The drawing should contain your family and a car. ∙ Participants must be 3 to 7 years old. Please visit our website to learn more.

《Mary High School Foreign Language Program》 Would you like to learn about another culture? Learning a new language is the best way to do it. Please come and enjoy our new foreign language classes. Languages: Arabic, French, Spanish (A student can choose only one.) Dates and Times: September 13, 2021 - October 29, 2021 Monday to Friday, 4:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m. Registration: Available from September 1 to September 5 on our website (www.maryhighs.edu) Tuition Fee: $50 (Full payment is required when registering.) Refund Policy: If you cancel on or before September 5, your payment will be refunded. For more information about the classes, feel free to contact us at (215) 8393-6047 or email us at info@maryhighs.edu.

Accepting whatever others are communicating only pays off if their interests correspond to ours - think cells in a body, bees in a beehive. As far as communication between humans is concerned, such commonality of interests is rarely achieved; even a pregnant mother has reasons to mistrust the chemical signals sent by her fetus. Fortunately, there are ways of making communication work even in the most adversarial of relationships. A prey can convince a predator not to chase it. But for such communication to occur, there must be strong guarantees that those who receive the signal will be better off believing it. The messages have to be kept, on the whole, honest. In the case of humans, honesty is maintained by a set of cognitive mechanisms that evaluate communicated information. These mechanisms allow us to accept most beneficial messages - to be open - while rejecting most harmful messages - to be vigilant.

In economic systems what takes place in one sector has impacts on another; demand for a good or service in one sector is derived from another. For instance, a consumer buying a good in a store will likely trigger the replacement of this product, which will generate demands for activities such as manufacturing, resource extraction and, of course, transport. What is different about transport is that it cannot exist alone and a movement cannot be stored. An unsold product can remain on the shelf of a store until bought (often with discount incentives), but an unsold seat on a flight or unused cargo capacity in the same flight remains unsold and cannot be brought back as additional capacity later. In this case an opportunity has been missed, since the amount of transport being offered has exceeded the demand for it. The derived demand of transportation is often very difficult to reconcile with an equivalent supply, and actually transport companies would prefer to have some additional capacity to accommodate unforeseen demand (often at much higher prices).

When examining the archaeological record of human culture, one has to consider that it is vastly incomplete. Many aspects of human culture have what archaeologists describe as low archaeological visibility, meaning they are difficult to identify archaeologically. Archaeologists tend to focus on tangible (or material) aspects of culture: things that can be handled and photographed, such as tools, food, and structures. Reconstructing intangible aspects of culture is more difficult, requiring that one draw more inferences from the tangible. It is relatively easy, for example, for archaeologists to identify and draw inferences about technology and diet from stone tools and food remains. Using the same kinds of physical remains to draw inferences about social systems and what people were thinking about is more difficult. Archaeologists do it, but there are necessarily more inferences involved in getting from physical remains recognized as trash to making interpretations about belief systems.

Even as mundane a behavior as watching TV may be a way for some people to escape painful self-awareness through distraction. To test this idea, Sophia Moskalenko and Steven Heine gave participants false feedback about their test performance, and then seated each one in front of a TV set to watch a video as the next part of the study. When the video came on, showing nature scenes with a musical soundtrack, the experimenter exclaimed that this was the wrong video and went supposedly to get the correct one, leaving the participant alone as the video played. The participants who had received failure feedback watched the video much longer than those who thought they had succeeded. The researchers concluded that distraction through television viewing can effectively relieve the discomfort associated with painful failures or mismatches between the self and self-guides. In contrast, successful participants had little wish to be distracted from their self-related thoughts!

It is important to recognise the interdependence between individual, culturally formed actions and the state of cultural integration. People work within the forms provided by the cultural patterns that they have internalised, however contradictory these may be. Ideas are worked out as logical implications or consequences of other accepted ideas, and it is in this way that cultural innovations and discoveries are possible. New ideas are discovered through logical reasoning, but such discoveries are inherent in and integral to the conceptual system and are made possible only because of the acceptance of its premises. For example, the discoveries of new prime numbers are 'real' consequences of the particular number system employed. Thus, cultural ideas show 'advances' and 'developments' because they are outgrowths of previous ideas. The cumulative work of many individuals produces a corpus of knowledge within which certain 'discoveries' become possible or more likely. Such discoveries are 'ripe' and could not have occurred earlier and are also likely to be made simultaneously by numbers of individuals.

Enabling animals to operate in the presence of harmless stimuli is an almost universal function of learning. Most animals innately avoid objects they have not previously encountered. Unfamiliar objects may be dangerous; treating them with caution has survival value. If persisted in, however, such careful behavior could interfere with feeding and other necessary activities to the extent that the benefit of caution would be lost. A turtle that withdraws into its shell at every puff of wind or whenever a cloud casts a shadow would never win races, not even with a lazy rabbit. To overcome this problem, almost all animals habituate to safe stimuli that occur frequently. Confronted by a strange object, an inexperienced animal may freeze or attempt to hide, but if nothing unpleasant happens, sooner or later it will continue its activity. The possibility also exists that an unfamiliar object may be useful, so if it poses no immediate threat, a closer inspection may be worthwhile.

A variety of theoretical perspectives provide insight into immigration. Economics, which assumes that actors engage in utility maximization, represents one framework. From this perspective, it is assumed that individuals are rational actors, i.e., that they make migration decisions based on their assessment of the costs as well as benefits of remaining in a given area versus the costs and benefits of leaving. Benefits may include but are not limited to short-term and long-term monetary gains, safety, and greater freedom of cultural expression. Individual costs include but are not limited to the expense of travel, uncertainty of living in a foreign land, difficulty of adapting to a different language, uncertainty about a different culture, and the great concern about living in a new land. Psychic costs associated with separation from family, friends, and the fear of the unknown also should be taken into account in cost-benefit assessments.

Green products involve, in many cases, higher ingredient costs than those of mainstream products. Furthermore, the restrictive ingredient lists and design criteria that are typical of such products may make green products inferior to mainstream products on core performance dimensions (e.g., less effective cleansers). In turn, the higher costs and lower performance of some products attract only a small portion of the customer base, leading to lower economies of scale in procurement, manufacturing, and distribution. Even if the green product succeeds, it may cannibalize the company's higher-profit mainstream offerings. Given such downsides, companies serving mainstream consumers with successful mainstream products face what seems like an obvious investment decision. They'd rather put money and time into known, profitable, high-volume products that serve populous customer segments than into risky, less-profitable, low-volume products that may serve current noncustomers. Given that choice, these companies may choose to leave the green segment of the market to small niche competitors.

Recently, a number of commercial ventures have been launched that offer social robots as personal home assistants, perhaps eventually to rival existing smart-home assistants. Personal robotic assistants are devices that have no physical manipulation or locomotion capabilities. Instead, they have a distinct social presence and have visual features suggestive of their ability to interact socially, such as eyes, ears, or a mouth. They might be motorized and can track the user around the room, giving the impression of being aware of the people in the environment. Although personal robotic assistants provide services similar to those of smart-home assistants, their social presence offers an opportunity that is unique to social robots. For instance, in addition to playing music, a social personal assistant robot would express its engagement with the music so that users would feel like they are listening to the music together with the robot. These robots can be used as surveillance devices, act as communicative intermediates, engage in richer games, tell stories, or be used to provide encouragement or incentives.

The earliest humans had access to only a very limited number of materials, those that occur naturally: stone, wood, clay, skins, and so on. With time, they discovered techniques for producing materials that had properties superior to those of the natural ones; these new materials included pottery and various metals. Furthermore, it was discovered that the properties of a material could be altered by heat treatments and by the addition of other substances. At this point, materials utilization was totally a selection process that involved deciding from a given, rather limited set of materials, the one best suited for an application based on its characteristics. It was not until relatively recent times that scientists came to understand the relationships between the structural elements of materials and their properties. This knowledge, acquired over approximately the past 100 years, has empowered them to fashion, to a large degree, the characteristics of materials. Thus, tens of thousands of different materials have evolved with rather specialized characteristics that meet the needs of our modern and complex society, including metals, plastics, glasses, and fibers.

The growing complexity of the social dynamics determining food choices makes the job of marketers and advertisers increasingly more difficult. In the past, mass production allowed for accessibility and affordability of products, as well as their wide distribution, and was accepted as a sign of progress. Nowadays it is increasingly replaced by the fragmentation of consumers among smaller and smaller segments that are supposed to reflect personal preferences. Everybody feels different and special and expects products serving his or her inclinations. In reality, these supposedly individual preferences end up overlapping with emerging, temporary, always changing, almost tribal formations solidifying around cultural sensibilities, social identifications, political sensibilities, and dietary and health concerns. Personal stories connect with larger narratives to generate new identities. These consumer communities go beyond national boundaries, feeding on global and widely shared repositories of ideas, images, and practices.

The computer has, to a considerable extent, solved the problem of acquiring, preserving, and retrieving information. Data can be stored in effectively unlimited quantities and in manageable form. The computer makes available a range of data unattainable in the age of books. It packages it effectively; style is no longer needed to make it accessible, nor is memorization. In dealing with a single decision separated from its context, the computer supplies tools unimaginable even a decade ago. But it also diminishes perspective. Because information is so accessible and communication instantaneous, there is a diminution of focus on its significance, or even on the definition of what is significant. This dynamic may encourage policymakers to wait for an issue to arise rather than anticipate it, and to regard moments of decision as a series of isolated events rather than part of a historical continuum. When this happens, manipulation of information replaces reflection as the principal policy tool.

In studies examining the effectiveness of vitamin C, researchers typically divide the subjects into two groups. One group (the experimental group) receives a vitamin C supplement, and the other (the control group) does not. Researchers observe both groups to determine whether one group has fewer or shorter colds than the other. The following discussion describes some of the pitfalls inherent in an experiment of this kind and ways to avoid them. In sorting subjects into two groups, researchers must ensure that each person has an equal chance of being assigned to either the experimental group or the control group. This is accomplished by randomization; that is, the subjects are chosen randomly from the same population by flipping a coin or some other method involving chance. Randomization helps to ensure that results reflect the treatment and not factors that might influence the grouping of subjects. Importantly, the two groups of people must be similar and must have the same track record with respect to colds to rule out the possibility that observed differences in the rate, severity, or duration of colds might have occurred anyway. If, for example, the control group would normally catch twice as many colds as the experimental group, then the findings prove nothing. In experiments involving a nutrient, the diets of both groups must also be similar, especially with respect to the nutrient being studied. If those in the experimental group were receiving less vitamin C from their usual diet, then any effects of the supplement may not be apparent.

When Sally came back home from her photography class, she could hear Katie moving around, chopping things on a wooden cutting board. Wondering what her roommate was doing, she ran to the kitchen. Sally watched Katie cooking something that looked delicious. But Katie didn't notice her because she was too focused on preparing for her cooking test the next day. She was trying to remember what her professor had said in class that day. In that class, Professor Brown said, You have to present your food properly, considering every stage of the dining experience. Imagine you are a photographer. Recalling what the professor had mentioned, Katie said to herself, We need to see our ingredients as colors that make up a picture. Sally could clearly see that Katie was having a hard time preparing for her cooking test. Trying to make her feel better, Sally kindly asked, Is there anything I can do to help? Katie, surprised by her roommate's words, turned her head to Sally and sighed, I don't know. This is really hard. Stirring her sauce for pasta, Katie continued, Professor Brown said that visual aspects make up a key part of a meal. My recipe seems good, but I can't think of any ways to alter the feeling of the final dish. Visibly frustrated, she was just about to throw away all of her hard work and start again, when Sally suddenly stopped her. Wait! You don't have to start over. You just need to add some color to the plate. Being curious, Katie asked, How can I do that? Sally took out a container of vegetables from the refrigerator and replied, How about making colored pasta to go with your sauce? Smiling, she added, It's not that hard, and all you need are brightly colored vegetables to make your pasta green, orange, or even purple. Katie smiled, knowing that now she could make her pasta with beautiful colors like a photographer.