Lava Mae
In many cities in the United States, the number of homeless people is increasing because the cost of rent is rising and there are fewer homes that they can afford. One such city is San Francisco, California. It is estimated that over 8,000 people are living on the streets there. With no homes, it is not surprising that these people often do not have ( 21 ). In fact, the city has only about 20 public showers available for the homeless.
In 2013, businesswoman Doniece Sandoval came up with an interesting project, called Lava Mae, to help the homeless with this problem. Sandoval heard that the city was going to replace many of its public buses, so she raised money to purchase some of them. She then turned them into places where the homeless can shower. Each bus has two large bathing areas, as well as clean toilets. Most homeless people also do not have soap or towels. ( 22 ), Lava Mae provides such supplies for everyone who comes.
Sandoval’s solution has one major advantage. The shower buses can be driven around to different places in the city each day. Also, Sandoval worked with the city to get permission to use water from fire hydrants around the city. In this way, the shower buses can go to the homeless people, so the people themselves ( 23 ) to a place to wash their bodies. Now, other cities are showing interest in Sandoval’s idea of changing buses into mobile showers for the homeless.
Go with the Flow
In recent years, climate change has been causing sea levels to rise in many parts of the world. According to scientists, this problem ( 24 ). They say that, by the end of this century, sea levels are expected to rise by about a meter worldwide. Consequently, major cities like London and New York could end up covered in water due to flooding. In fact, in some cities, flooding is already occurring.
In response to this, city planners and engineers have begun efforts to build barriers, such as dams and large concrete sea walls, to protect cities from water. This has helped a little. Unfortunately, though, these kinds of barriers may not ( 25 ). This is because scientists believe that powerful storms are likely to increase due to climate change. The high waves produced by such storms could easily reach over the barriers, spilling water into cities that barriers currently protect.
Although this seems like bad news for coastal cities, some architects believe it is a chance to reconsider how water is used. In fact, according to Koen Olthuis, the founder of a Dutch company called Waterstudio, more water is not necessarily a problem, but can actually be a solution to many modern problems. For example, dams that are built to protect cities from water can also be used to produce electricity. ( 26 ), by creating buildings that float on top of water, the buildings will be able to move with the rising water levels. In this way, cities can work with water, rather than fight against it.
From: Larry Spears ＜l-spears3@toosoft.com＞
To: Angela Landers ＜a-landers1@toosoft.com＞
Subject: S7 Software Conference
Dear Ms. Landers,
I’m sending you an e-mail today about the S7 Software Conference that will be held in Los Angeles this summer. Our company has decided to participate in S7 again this year. We plan to use the event as an opportunity to show some of our new ideas to the public. Therefore, we will need some employees to show products from each of our software development teams at S7.
Your team will also need to present one new product. As the team leader, you must select one employee to attend the event and to give a presentation. That person will also have to spend time meeting people and answering questions about our company. Peter Harris from the accounting department will book plane tickets and hotel rooms for the trip.
The product you choose must be something interesting that has not been advertised yet. We want it to be a surprise for the audience. The presentation will be on the main stage at S7, so make sure the employee you select is a good speaker and comfortable in front of a large audience. We will discuss the details of the event at a special managers’ meeting next month. Meanwhile, please let me know who will be attending by the end of the day.
Larry Spears
Opera for Everyone
Opera is a traditional performance that started in Italy in the 16th century and became popular around the world. These classical music performances are now held in theaters known as opera houses. Although going to the opera is usually expensive, recently audiences have been growing in size. This fact, of course, makes opera houses and their performers happy. According to current research, however, these growing audiences also hide a big potential problem the average age of audiences is high.
The average age at the State Opera in Berlin in Germany, for example, is now 54, while that at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City is 58. In Houston in the United States, the largest age group going to the opera is between 65 and 72 years old. This means that, although opera companies are enjoying a good income now, they are worried about their audiences getting much smaller in the future.
In order to preserve this traditional art form, opera houses have been working to attract more young people to their performances. One of the most successful examples of this is at the Paris Opera. In 2018, the Paris Opera managed to attract 95,000 people under the age of 28 to its performances 30,000 more than the previous year. One way it has done this is by offering special shows for people under 28 at low prices. It has also produced a series of videos about opera aimed at young people that was released on the Internet.
The Royal Opera in London has also seen an increase in young audience members. It says that now 39 percent of people booking tickets for their performances are 40 years old or younger. As the audiences have gotten younger, though, their behavior has begun to change. For example, when evil characters in the operas appear on stage, young audience members often shout or make angry sounds. However, in the past, this only happened when performers sang badly. Some older people were worried that the performers would be upset, but the performers have actually welcomed the reaction. They say that it shows audiences are becoming more relaxed and are enjoying the opera more.
Knowing Where to Go
Many animals move from one place to another as the seasons change this is called migration. Usually, they spend the summers in cooler places and the winters in warmer places. Scientific research has shown that some animals are born with the knowledge of when and where they should move. Others, though, do not have such an instinct. In such cases, they must learn from their parents or other members of their group.
A team of scientists at the University of Wyoming studied how animals called moose and bighorn sheep learn to travel. The team chose moose and bighorn sheep living in the mountains in the western United States. This was because, in the 19th century, a disease had caused the death of a large number of these animals. However, in recent years, scientists have brought a number of these animals from other places to restore their populations. Therefore, there were both new and old groups to compare.
The scientists used GPS technology to track the movements of hundreds of moose and bighorn sheep. Some belonged to older groups that had lived in the west for more than 200 years, while others were part of newer groups that had recently been introduced to the area. The result was that almost all the members of older groups migrated at the right time between the higher and the lower parts of the mountains. However, newer groups usually moved at the wrong time or did not move at all. In fact, among animals that arrived within the last 10 years, only 9 percent were able to make the move successfully.
In addition, the scientists recorded how much food was available along the migration routes that each animal took. They found that animals from older groups chose routes that had large amounts of food sometimes traveling great distances between food sources. However, animals from newer groups only moved to nearby sources of food that they could see. According to the scientists, this shows that moose and bighorn sheep have gained knowledge of the best routes from older members of their groups, but this knowledge did not exist in the newer groups.