Last week, your company came out to paint the stripes on our new parking lot. I was on vacation at the time but when I returned, I was appalled at the poor workmanship that was done. Some of the lines are shorter than others and most are uneven. Our patrons are not even sure how to park. We've finally had another company lined up to redo the work next week. The work your company did should be somehow removed. Please be advised you have until Friday of this week to be finished. I expect to see a clean blacktop surface ready for the new crew to begin work on. I myself will be overseeing this and expect to have the utmost cooperation.

Kalu, an elephant in the Central Park Zoo, trusted only one handler, a man named Albert Brockell. When Albert became sick with leukemia, Kalu refused to go inside to his quarters because his main man had not spoken the command. As winter approached, this became a serious concern. No one else could persuade him. He responded to an attempt at forcing him inside with anger, injuring the new would-be handler. Desperate zoo officials finally made a recording of Albert at the hospital, so Kalu could hear his voice ordering him to go inside. But Kalu refused to obey a mere recording. Finally Albert volunteered to be taken to the zoo in an ambulance. He was delivered to the elephant's side on a gurney. Go inside, Kalu, he said. Finally he obeyed.

Schoolteacher Carol Tateishi writes that in her Asian upbringing, she was taught that silence is a sign of self-reliance and strength. She interviewed five Asian American secondary school students from various ethnic backgrounds. Even though their families spanned 100 years of immigration, some recurrent themes emerged, such as you're not supposed to say too much and talk could cause disrespect and harsh feelings. The girls who entered U.S. schools as English language learners feared speaking up because they were self-conscious about their language skills. Another girl mentioned that girls were not supposed to speak unless spoken to. Restraint in speech was valued by these students and their families, whereas speaking in class is taken as intellectual engagement and meaning-making in U.S. classrooms.

Empathy is made possible by a special group of nerve cells called mirror neurons. These special cells enable us to mirror emotions. Mirror neurons were first discovered by Italian scientists who, while looking at the activity of individual nerve cells inside the brains of monkeys, noticed that neurons in the same area of the brain were activated whether the animals were performing a particular movement or simply observing another monkey perform the same action. It appeared as though the cells in the observer's brain mirrored the activity in the performer's brain. A similar phenomenon takes place when we watch someone experiencing an emotion and feel the same emotion in response. The same neural systems get activated in a part of the insula, which is part of the mirror neuron system, and in the emotional brain areas associated with the observed emotion.

We have been talking of social science as if it were a single entity. That is hardly the case. Which, in fact, are the social sciences? One way to answer the question is to see what departments and disciplines universities group under this name. Social science divisions usually include departments of anthropology, economics, politics, and sociology. Why do they not ordinarily include schools of law, education, business, social service, and public administration as well, all of which draw on the concepts and methods of the social sciences for their development? The reason is that the main purpose of such schools is to train for professional work outside of the university, while the previously mentioned departments are more exclusively dedicated to the pursuit of systematic knowledge of human society, an activity that usually goes on within the university.

As Rip was about to descend he heard a voice from a distance hallooing, Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle! He looked around, but could see nothing but a crow winging its solitary flight across the mountain. He thought his fancy must have deceived him, and turned again to descend, when he heard the same cry ring through the still evening air, Rip Van Winkle! Rip Van Winkle! ― at the same time his dog bristled up his back, and giving a low growl, skulked to his master's side, looking fearfully down into the glen. Rip now felt a vague apprehension stealing over him: he looked anxiously in the same direction, and perceived a strange figure slowly toiling up the rocks, and bending under the weight of something he carried on his back.

A tremendous proportion of the early learning for an infant is in developing verbal skills―learning to speak, to understand speech, to read and to write. However, once a certain competence has been acquired most people stop developing verbal skills. Studies have shown that there is a strong correlation between people's abilities with words and range of vocabulary and success in their chosen fields. People who can express themselves clearly are perceived as more intelligent and of higher status. Why do we stop doing what we spent most of our early years doing? The trouble is that we take our verbal abilities for granted. Once we have mastered reading, writing and speaking we move on to other things. We have acquired the most important tool in our mental toolbox. We depend on it for all sorts of tasks but we rarely take time to sharpen it. It makes better sense to maintain, enhance and extend the tool.

Why did the same themes and motifs appear through the myths and folktales of the entire world? One response of many late-nineteenth century writers was to suggest that somehow all the stories, myths and legends were simply attempts to explain and to dramatize natural phenomena, familiar to all mankind. One popular theory was that stories of the god who dies and is reborn were solar myths, describing the setting and rising of the sun. It was suggested that the widespread folktales in which a heroine is eaten by a monster must have had something to do with the sun being eaten by the moon in the course of an eclipse. A more sophisticated version of these arguments has been advanced in more recent times by writers who attempted to relate the nderlying forms of tragedy and comedy to the theme of death and resurrection in the cycle of the year, for example, winter giving way to spring, and so forth.

Are you tired of always being told to look on the bright side? Do you wish your optimistic friends would just leave you alone and let you be negative? If you answered yes to either of these questions, you may be one of the millions of people who have learned to cope with the pressures of modern life by using what Dr. Norem calls Defensive Pessimism, a strategy of imagining the worst-case scenario of any situation to motivate and carry out effective actions. What if the train is running late, and you won't make it to your job interview on time? What if you don't know anyone at a party you'll be attending? What if you don't know any of the questions on your final exam? Dr. Norem believes indulging in negative thoughts actually helps people go on to do their best by preparing for the worst. In fact, she has found that many people perform more poorly when forced to think positive, since negative thinking is often an effective strategy for managing anxiety.

Using a cast after injuring an arm may cause your brain to shift quickly to adjust, according to a new study. For the study, researchers examined 10 right-handed people with an injury of the upper right arm that required a cast for at least 14 days. The entire right arm and hand were restricted to little or no movement during the study period. As a result, participants used their non-dominant left hand for daily activities such as washing, using a toothbrush, eating or writing. The group underwent two MRI brain scans, the first within two days of the injury and the second within 16 days of wearing the cast. The scans measured the amount of gray and white matter in the brain. The study found that the amount of gray and white matter in the left side of the brain decreased up to ten percent, while the amount of gray and white matter in the right side of the brain increased in size. These swift structural changes in the brain are associated with skill transfer from the right hand to the left hand, said the head researcher.

Randy Garner, of Sam Houston State University, mailed surveys, varying the information on the cover sheet to ensure that the first name of the addressee either matched or didn't match the experimenter's first name. So in the matching name group, a participant named Fred Smith might receive a survey from researcher Fred Jones, while in the non-matching name group, participant Julie Green might get a survey from Amanda White. This remarkably simple manipulation affected the response rate, with 30 percent in the non-matching name condition returning the survey, compared to 56 percent returned from those who saw their own first name on the cover. This work suggests that people are far more likely to support, and agree with, those who appear to be like them. The research points to a simple fact: Similarity works.

Recently, an experiment was conducted on college students where they were asked to participate in a food taste test. However, the real object of the test was to demonstrate that group pressure leads to unreasonable conformity. A group of ten college students were recruited to perform a taste test on a new yogurt. However, nine of the ten students were part of the experiment and were told to repeat a predetermined response when asked about the taste. Only one test subject was the actual unknown. When given the yogurt to taste, each was asked to give their impressions. The test subject was to go last. The yogurt given was strawberry flavored. After hearing the responses of the other nine students claiming to taste vanilla instead of strawberry, the test subject in eight out of ten cases went with the majority and said he tasted vanilla instead of strawberry. When the experiment was repeated with many subjects, only about 20 percent of the subjects stuck to their guns.

Several species of oceanic bacteria consume methane gas that naturally seeps from the ocean floor. So after the BP blowout in spring and summer of 2010, when 172 million gallons of methane-rich oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico, scientists wondered how much of the dissolved gas might be consumed by native microbes. To find out, oceanographers collected more than 700 water samples around the spill. They found bacteria had eliminated more than 120,000 tons of methane, essentially returning the concentrations in the area to normal. But there is still work to be done. The bacterial cleanup probably did not eliminate polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, known as one of the most toxic and potentially dangerous ingredients in oil. The bacteria did a nice job taking care of some of the major oil components, the researcher says, but that doesn't mean we can count on nature to handle all man-made disasters.

When you learn a new skill, at first you need to concentrate in order to make your fingers, hands, and arms move in just the right way, based on what you see. What you're learning is precision. After a while, however, the seeing-thinking-doing gradually becomes seeing-doing because your muscles seem to know and remember just what to do. What you are learning now is speed. That's muscle memory. Of course, during the drill-and-practice, your muscles are not really memorizing anything. Instead, what you see with your eyes is interpreted by your brain in the form of nerve signals to your muscles to make your body move. Now by making the same movements in response to the same visual cues over and over again, the associated nerve-muscle connections gradually become more effective, and this is how the thinking in the seeing-thinking-doing is gradually replaced by seeing-doing.

Most visitors to zoos are convinced that the inmates live incomfort, but this view is far from the truth in many cases. Many caged animals are in fact facing a survival problem as severe as that of their cousins in the wild. Well fed, well housed, well cared for, and protected from its natural enemies, the zoo animal in its super-Welfare State existence is bored, sometimes literally to death. According to some zoologists, the animal species which seem to react most strongly to this monotony are the ones that do not rely on one or two highly developed adaptations or tricks to survive in the wild. Normally seizing every opportunity to exploit the chances and variety of their surroundings, they are constantly exploring. It is not surprising that when such species are placed in the highly invariable environment of a zoo cage, where there are few novel stimuli, they cannot accept any kind of enforced inactivity.

Financial markets have become more variable since exchange rates were freed in 1973 and authorities seem to have lost control over them. As a result, interest rates and exchange rates now fluctuate more rapidly than at any time. At the same time, companies' profit margins have been squeezed by the lowering of trade barriers and increased international competition. The result is that companies worldwide have been forced to learn to accept and deal with their financial hazards. No longer can managers stick their heads in the sand and pretend that because their firms make cars, or sell soap powders, they need only worry about this year's car or whether their new detergent washes whiter than Brand X. Many have found to their cost, disregarding interest-rate, currency or commodity risks can hurt a company just as badly as the failure of a new product.

In order to efficiently use and measure time, everyone in the world would like to fix noon as the time at which the sun is at its highest point in the sky. However, this seems to be impossible without the use of time zones. Since the Earth rotates at the rate of 15 degrees every hour, the sun is at its highest point in the sky at different times in the day for different countries around the globe. The idea behind time zones is that we can divide the world into 24 equal slices or zones, 15 degrees each, and adjust the clocks accordingly for each zone. We can thus preserve the need to fix noon as the time when the sun is highest in the sky for each country, and also make it easy to understand times between different zones.

All of us know that advertising does more than merely sell products and form consumption patterns: it informs, educates, changes attitudes, and builds images. However, we overlook that its enormous power is abused more often in developing countries by transnational corporations. Advertising in developing countries may facilitate the transfer of consumption patterns of developed countries to developing ones, by introducing needs which may not be appropriate, given the income and demand structure in these countries. Other unfavorable implications can arise for the developing countries as a result of misleading advertising which does not reveal the harmful effects of some products of transnational firms which, although banned in the developed market economies, are available in the developing countries because of insufficient regulation. Furthermore, aggressive advertising campaigns by transnational corporations in developing countries may overshadow domestic enterprises.

The above graph shows the top five favorite literature genres in England by gender in 2008. According to the graph, history is the most popular literature genre among men in England. Among women, fiction is more popular than any other literature genre, accounting for more than 40 percent, while one out of four men think that fiction is their favorite. The percentage of men who choose biography as their favorite is more than twice that of women who choose the same. Of the five genres, poetry is the third most popular one for women, with a rate of around 15 percent, but it is the least popular genre for men. Both genders show the same popularity percentage for criticism with less than 10 percent each.

One of the world's most iconic and renowned castles is Neuschwanstein Castle, which is situated in the Emerald mountains of Bavaria, Germany, close to the border of Tirol in Austria. Built from 1869 to 1892, it was constructed as a private retreat from public life for Ludwig II of Bavaria. Ironically, seven weeks after the death of King Ludwig II, this castle was opened to the public. Known for its wondrous Romanesque Revival architecture and richly decorated interior, Neuschwanstein Castle today is visited by more than one million people every year. In fact, it served as the inspiration for Sleeping Beauty Castle in Disney Land.

Mary Jane Grant was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1805. Her father was a Scottish soldier, and her mother a Jamaican. Mary learned her nursing skills from her mother, who kept a boarding house for invalid soldiers. Being of mixed race, Mary and her family had few civil rights―they could not vote, hold public office or enter the professions. In 1836, Mary married Edwin Seacole but the marriage was short-lived as he died in 1844. In 1854, Mary travelled to England, and approached the War Office, asking to be sent as an army nurse to the Crimea, but she was refused. Undaunted, Mary funded her own trip to the Crimea where she established the British Hotel near Balaclava to provide comfortable quarters for sick and injured soldiers.

How many times do you finish something even though you wish you'd never started it? We clean our plates even if the carrots are overcooked because they are there and we've already started eating. We do this even though we would never seek overcooked carrots and wouldn't want them if anyone offered them to us. We sit in the movie theater and keep watching the movie when we think it's terrible, even though under no circumstances would we say yes if someone asked, Would you like to watch forty-five minutes of an awful movie? We do the same thing when we continue a project that is off target. We keep going because we've already started, not because it makes any sense to continue what we're doing. Don't run in the wrong direction just because you're near the finish line. What is important is not what you've already invested but what you stand to gain by continuing.

Sometimes we need an adversary to defeat in order to turn our I and me into we and us. We may think of ourselves as independent individualists, yet we can be transformed into enthusiastic citizens, fans, members, or followers by a team championship or victory. Researchers call it Basking in Reflected Glory. After a team victory, far more students show up to classes wearing clothes with their university's name and symbols plastered on them. When they talk about the team's win, they are more likely to use the pronouns we and us instead of they and them. They stress their connection to the winners. The social psychological perspective on community and fan loyalty stresses the positive impact of this shared identity ― as a supporter and fan of the team ― on relationships and overall well-being. It helps people escape the feeling of isolation and individuality that sometimes plagues them.

With today's global competition, there is increasing concern about the nature and quality of higher education. One of the main concerns focuses on higher education's purpose ― should it be practical and graduate well-equipped students to supply a competitive workforce? Or, should it rather explore what some critics label romantic notions of a liberal education with broad ideas and values to prepare students for democratic citizenship? Many people in the modern world think it is he who specializes who survives and thrives. However, it is not absolutely the case. For students to be truly successful in today's challenging global economy, higher education must recognize and emphasize that practical and liberal education are tightly coupled, and that students' academic, developmental, interpersonal and experiential lives are entwined. In other words, it is advisable that colleges provide a well-rounded education which can cultivate the whole student instead of overestimating technical and vocational education.

Usually, an article for publication in a scholarly journal is produced for a specific audience. It will have to be carefully and accurately written because the editors of the publication and its readers will not accept poorly researched writing. When an author finishes writing an article, he or she submits it to the editors of the publication. It is then usually sent to many professional readers who will comment on how the information was gathered and decide whether the article is worthy of publication. Feedback from them often results in significant revisions or changes to the document. The author might even decide not to proceed with further writing if, for example, the document has major flaws or if the research on which it is based is found to be incomplete or faulty. This step is rigorous and it usually ensures that only high-quality articles are published.

One of the greatest civilizations of ancient times was the Egyptians. The ancient Egyptians excelled in many areas of science, one of these being dentistry. However, they suffered from rather unique types of dental problems due to their culture. The basic diet of Egyptians consisted mainly of plants and breads. The bread was made of grains ground on rough stones, which caused small stones to become incorporated into the bread dough. This produced a bread which was very coarse in consistency and difficult to chew. The plants in their diet were also quite gritty as the area in which they lived was very sandy. The combination of these two conditions caused extensive wear and abrasion of their teeth, leading to problems such as nerve exposure.

Much of socialization takes place during human interaction, without the deliberate intent to impart knowledge or values. For example, a four-year-old approaches two teachers conversing and excitedly says, Miss Jones, Miss Jones, look! One teacher says, Sally, don't interrupt; we're talking. Later that morning Sally and her friend Tanya are busily playing with Legos. Sally is explaining and demonstrating to Tanya how to fit the pieces together. Miss Jones comes over to the block corner and interrupts with, Girls, please stop what you're doing and come and see what Rene has brought to school. It is very likely that the message Sally received from the morning's interactions was that it is not OK for children to interrupt adults, but it is OK for adults to interrupt children. The example shows that unintentional socialization may be the product of involvement in human interaction or observation of interaction.

In a series of studies, researchers had participants fill in a questionnaire on their preferences among candy bar brands. Some participants answered an intention question (How likely are you to purchase a candy bar in the near future?), while others answered an attitude question (How positive or negative are you about the candy bars available to you?). After they answered the questions, they were asked to make an actual brand choice decision in a store. Those who responded to an intention question were more likely to choose the brand they previously indicated they preferred the most than those who responded to an attitude question, the researchers say. Consumers are motivated to fulfill their intentions, and this motivation narrows their focus. The intention puts the intention-related brand to the front of consumers' minds and pushes other well-liked brands to the back until the consumer has accomplished the intention, the head researcher says.

If you've ever had would-be buyers looking around a house, you'll have noticed their observations about each room are usually limited to: Hmm, it's a good size. or Hmm, it's rather small. Little wonder then that home-improvers are so often fixated on making their rooms appear as spacious as possible. Home design practice will tell them to paint their ceilings as as possible, and in particular make the ceiling distinct from the walls. This contrast between ceilings and walls, so the advice goes, will increase the perceived room height. Does it really? A recent study shows a different view for this tradition. Researchers had 32 participants wear 3-D glasses and use a sliding scale to judge the ceiling height of many virtual rooms. The rooms were empty and the colors were in shades of grey so that only lightness was varied. In particular, the ceiling, walls and floor were varied in lightness. Increasing the lightness of the ceiling did increase its perceived height. However, contrary to the traditional advice, the rooms also appeared higher when the walls were lighter. Moreover, the effect of ceiling lightness and wall lightness was additive. So the contrast effect informed by traditional design practice was not complete. Floor lightness made no difference to estimates of ceiling height, so it can't be overall room lightness that's crucial, but only the combination of wall and ceiling lightness. If you intend to make the room appear higher, paint both the ceiling and the walls in a light color.