Attention Please: The senior community center located in our neighborhood has just completed a six-month renovation. Many people have been eagerly waiting for its reopening, and we are happy to report that it has been greatly improved. You may remember that the reopening was originally scheduled for November 1. Although all of our facilities are perfectly ready for welcoming you, a few programs, including arts and crafts, are not ready to run. Instead of having a partial reopening, we have decided to wait until December 1 to open our doors. At that time, the senior community center will be fully functional and ready to meet your needs. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused, but we are sure you will be satisfied with the changes we have made. Jenny Kwon Newton Senior Community Center manager

In 1812, Napoleon marched from Paris with an army of 400,000 soldiers, his objective being to invade Russia to punish it for breaking his trade embargo on Great Britain. This turned out to be a huge mistake. He spent six months battling the Russians with soldiers ill-prepared for the frigid weather, only to be defeated and lose more than 300,000 men. Nearly 130 years later, a similar ill-considered decision was made. After easily defeating Poland and France, Hitler planned to invade Russia in order to seize the country's farm lands and oil fields. His generals warned him about Russia's harsh winters, reminding him of what had happened to Napoleon, but Hitler was convinced that he would be able to succeed where Napoleon had failed. Of course, his invasion went just as poorly as Napoleon's. The wintery weather conditions of Russia once again proved insurmountable, and the Nazis were defeated.

College students who want to become sign-language interpreters are often required to take acting classes. This is because interpreting spoken language into sign language requires the ability to communicate information with your eyes, your face, and your whole body. To be a good sign-language interpreter, you must be able to temporarily abandon your own personality and adopt the personality of each person you interpret for. If, for example, the person speaks in a funny and dramatic manner, you should sign in a funny and dramatic way. On the other hand, if the person has a monotonous and boring way of speaking, you should reflect a lack of excitement on your face. This may not be interesting or fun for the audience, but it is important to interpret not only the words but also the essence of what is being said.

When it comes to the way children are raised in the US these days, there are two distinct aspects. The first is praise - today's kids are praised to a greater degree than ever before. Children have always been given encouragement by their parents, but they get a thousand times more today. In fact, most American children are told continuously how special they are. The second aspect is that children are pushed to develop their abilities and talents to an unprecedented degree. Parents worry about their children getting into a prestigious college and finding a high-paying job, so they spend much more time investing in their children's skills than they did in the past. And when these two child-rearing trends combine, the results can be intense and overwhelming. Parents shower their kids with love and praise, but at the same time they manipulate their lives to ensure high levels of success and achievement.

Everyone likes getting free stuff, but our economy can't function on things we don't pay for. Therefore, even if something seems to be free, you'll likely be paying for it other ways. That's the idea behind the old saying "there's no such thing as a free lunch." It originated in the mid-twentieth century, when a customer observed that the free food at bars wasn't really free - the price of the drinks was simply raised to pay for it. These days, it is most commonly used in economics, where it means that all transactions involve a trade-off. In other words, the moment you get something, you must accept that you're going to have to give up something in return. Understanding this could prevent you from parting with your money without even realizing what you have done.

Generally speaking, teenagers should get 8 to 10 hours of sleep each night. Unfortunately, many teens don't get enough sleep. Part of the problem is excessive schoolwork, and staying up late playing with their smartphones doesn't help either. However, much of the problem can be blamed on the circadian rhythm, or internal clock, of teenagers. Children's circadian rhythms change during their teen years. This is most likely due to melatonin, a hormone released by the brain. It is released later at night in teens than it is in kids and adults. This is the reason why teenagers find it difficult to go to bed early. So, on Saturday and Sunday mornings, when teens tend to sleep late and get a few extra hours of sleep, they are improving their mental health, along with their memory and ability to learn.

Astronomers have taken the first ever image of a black hole, which is located in a distant galaxy called M87. The black hole is approximately 55 million light-years away. It is estimated to have a diameter of 40 billion kilometers, making it about three million times larger than Earth. Also, with a mass equivalent to about 6.5 billion suns, it is one of the heaviest black holes that scientists know about. A network of eight telescopes collectively known as the Event Horizon Telescope had to be used to take the photo, as no single telescope was powerful enough to record the whole image. A team of 200 scientists scanned the M87 galaxy with the telescopes for 10 days. The data they gathered was then used to produce the image, which is now considered to be one of the greatest scientific achievements in recent years.

Everyone knows that not getting enough sleep can leave you in a bad mood the next morning. However, it can also impair your cognition and memory, cause depression and anxiety, and increase your risk of other health problems. Even a single night of inadequate sleep can adversely affect your mood and make it harder to properly regulate your emotions. A study examined participants who went through different sleep deprivation experiments whose purpose was to assess their ability to control their emotions. The researchers then took PET and MRI scans of each participant, with which they were able to analyze their brain activity. They found that low-quality sleep prevented the brain from transmitting and processing information properly. It also had a negative effect on the participants' perception of events and their ability to manage their emotions.

The average person's language skills are easily affected by external changes up until the age of about 12. Research on children who have been adopted internationally has shown that they often forget their native language after moving abroad. This, however, is unlikely to occur with adults, unless the external circumstances are extreme. An expert on the subject of what makes people lose their mother tongue studied the German of elderly German Jews who fled the country for the UK or US during the Holocaust. How much German they retained mainly depended on how much trauma they had experienced. Those who fled Germany when the Nazis first took power and avoided the worst of the tragic events that followed spoke better German. Those who left later and suffered more, on the other hand, spoke German poorly or not at all. For them, German was a reminder of painful memories they wanted to forget.

Thanks to modern technology, it's almost impossible to get lost these days. Wherever you may go, you are always within reach of satellites spinning through space that can help you determine your exact location. These satellites are part of satellite navigation systems that can figure out your position and speed, as well as the local time where you are. Because they are based on radio signals that reach the entire globe, people everywhere can use them. But how exactly do they work? Although there are many satellite navigation systems, they all function in basically the same way. They consist of three parts: a network of orbiting satellites, a control station on Earth, and portable devices with the ability to receive signals. Each satellite in the network transmits radio signals toward Earth. The receiving device picks up signals sent from three or four satellites and uses this information to calculate your precise location, including your altitude.

Foods and drinks with lots of carbohydrates and sugars cause certain bacteria to form in your mouth and attack your tooth enamel for at least twenty minutes after you eat. By brushing right after you eat, you can remove bacteria before they cause any damage. However, brushing your teeth directly after consuming acidic foods, like lemons or orange juice, can also negatively affect your tooth enamel. You should wait at least 30 minutes before brushing your teeth because the acids remaining in your mouth can temporarily weaken your enamel. Brushing your teeth in this weakened state can cause more harm than good. A good solution to this problem is to brush your teeth before eating acidic things. Then, after you've eaten, drink a glass of water to wash away any remaining acids. Eating nutritious foods low in carbohydrates and sugars after eating something acidic is another good way to help reduce harmful acids.

Duygu Asena, a Turkish journalist, author, publisher, and activist, dedicated her life to fighting against local social norms limiting women's autonomy over their own lives. Although she initially intended to become a teacher, she took a job as a journalist, writing for the newspapers Hurriyet and Cumhuriyet in the 1970s. In 1978, she founded Turkey's first women's magazine, Kadinca, and nine years later she published a novel criticizing the oppression of women and the idea of marriage without love. Titled The Woman Has No Name, it was a bestseller and was later adapted into a movie. After she passed away from brain cancer in 2006, a writer's association called PEN International began giving out the Duygu Asena Award to women fighting for freedom of expression.

Jane Austen was an English novelist famous for her books set among England's middle and upper classes and featuring insights into the lives of women in the early 19th century. She was born in Hampshire in 1775, one of eight children of a clergyman. After the death of her father in 1805, Jane and her family moved to Chawton. She began writing when she was still a teenager, and her brother helped her negotiate a contract with a publishing company. Her first novel, Sense and Sensibility, was published in 1811, followed by Pride and Prejudice. Austen's work was quite popular and received highly favorable reviews. In 1816, however, Austen started to suffer from what is believed to have been Addison's disease. She passed away in 1817 in Winchester, where she had traveled to receive treatment. Austen left behind two novels, Persuasion and Northanger Abbey, that were published posthumously, along with a third book unfinished at the time of her death.

Inattentional blindness is the phenomenon of failing to see a visible but unexpected object because your attention is focused elsewhere. Although it has always existed, it has become a greater issue in modern society. The world our ancestors lived in was less complex, and there were fewer objects and events that needed our immediate attention. In contrast, technology has brought the modern world numerous machines and devices that continuously require large amounts of our attention as quickly as possible. Our brains are capable of handling visual demands for attention, but not in such large amounts or at such rapid speeds. When we are walking, failing to notice something for a few seconds probably won't affect our survival. When we are driving, however, a delay of even a tenth of a second in noticing an unexpected event can have tragic results.

Every place has different laws, but some laws are unique. One of the unusual laws is from Singapore, where chewing gum cannot be imported. In fact, it is illegal to chew gum in public places. This law is intended to help keep the city clean. In Denmark, a law prohibits parents from giving their babies unusual names. There is a list of 33,000 approved names that parents with new babies can choose from. If they want to use something different, they must ask for approval from the government. Finally, if someone feeds pigeons in Venice, they may be fined up to E500. This is because pigeons make the city's monuments dirty and spread disease. These are just a few examples of unexpected laws. Travelers should always check the laws of the places they visit to avoid getting in trouble.