Economics survive by continually responding to the world around them. This means employing new technologies or exploiting new international markets when     1     growth. Today, these global shifts — dramatic shocks to economies — occur more frequently, are more     2     and, in knowledge-based economies are more dependent on talent than ever. In countries where a workforce lacks the skills that are suddenly in     3    , we see a skills gap emerge. This leads to higher unemployment rates while vacancies increase and productivity and growth decline.

So how can economies     4    ? By adapting. However, unlike the macro-strategies of the last century, people — not just policy — must drive today’s adaptability. Employers and policymakers have long     5     the importance of a flexible workforce, but until now it has been difficult to isolate the human element — the willingness and ability of employees to seek out and find opportunities across multiple employers, locations and industries. Our new ability to measure it and analyse talent adaptability — and to start to understand what drives it — are crucial steps forward.

The     6     of a market to match supply and demand efficiently depends on the ability and willingness of employers and employees to adapt to changing circumstances and align (使一致) skills with available opportunities. If this alignment is less than perfect, a mismatch     7     and optimum productivity can’t be reached.

Adapt to Survive for the first time brings together the two most comprehensive sources of talent data in the world: the real-time behaviours drawn from LinkedIn’s 277 million members and employer information from PwC’s Saratoga database of people and performance metrics (指标) which covers more than 2,600 employers across the globe. This report sets a new benchmark for     8     a country’s ability to match talent with opportunity and the movement of people between industries — the Talent Adaptability Score. This score is given to 11 countries. For each country, we evaluate how the Score     9     economic performance. Our recommendations are organised around four groups:

● Individuals — Prove your adaptability.

● Employers — Seek out, nurture and reward talents who can adapt.

● Educators — Offer courses and job training that produce     10     people.

● Governments — Create a climate of adaptability.

4 . Maps, number lines, shapes, artwork and other materials tend to cover elementary classroom walls. However, too much of a good thing may end up _______ attention and learning in young children, according to research published in Psychological Science.

Psychology researchers Anna V. Fisher, Karrie E. Godwin and Howard Seltman of Carnegie Mellon University looked at whether classroom displays affected children’s ability to maintain _______ during instruction and to learn the lesson content. They found that children in highly decorated classrooms were more distracted, spent more time off-task and demonstrated smaller learning _______than when the decorations were removed.

“Young children spend a lot of time — usually the whole day — in the same classroom, and we have shown that a classroom’s _______ environment can affect how much children learn,” said Fisher, lead author and associate professor of psychology in the Dietrich College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

Should teachers _______ their visual displays based on the findings of this study?

“We do not suggest by any means that this is the answer to all _______ problems. Furthermore,_______ research is needed to know what effect the classroom visual environment has on children’s attention and learning in real classrooms,” Fisher said. “_______, I would suggest that instead of removing all decorations, teachers should consider whether some of their visual displays do make it difficult for young children to _______.”

For the study, 24 kindergarten students were placed in ________classrooms for six introductory science lessons on topics they were unfamiliar with. Three lessons were taught in a heavily decorated classroom, and three lessons were given in a sparse (稀疏的) classroom. The results showed that while children learned in both __________ types, they learned more when the room was not heavily decorated. Specifically, children’s __________ on the test questions was higher in the sparse classroom (55% correct) than in the decorated classroom (42% correct).

“We were also interested in finding out if the visual displays were removed, whether the children’s attention would __________ to another distraction, such as talking to their peers, or the total amount of time they were distracted would remain the same,” said Godwin, a Ph.D. candidate in psychology and fellow of the Program in Interdisciplinary Education Research.

However, when the researchers totaled all of the time children spent off-task in both types of classrooms, the rate of off-task __________ was higher in the decorated classroom (38.6% time spent off-task) than in the sparse classroom (28.4% time spent off-task).

The researchers hope these findings will lead to further studies into developing guidelines to help teachers design classrooms __________.

6 . The Psychology of Giving: Why do People Give to Charity?

Every day, leaders in the nonprofit sector invest valuable time, energy, and money into educating and spreading awareness of their mission in the hopes that this will increase support for their nonprofit. They assume that if only more people knew about a school’s budget cuts, for example, then they would surely donate! So, they bombard (连续轰炸) potential supporters with depressing statistics or complex arguments.     1    .

Why do people donate to charity? While it’s true that donors and volunteers are motivated to make the world a better place because it’s the right thing to do, that’s not the entire—or even the primary—reason for their generosity.     2    . In other words, we give because it feels good and that good feeling connects us to others in ways that we find satisfying. While that might sound selfish, all it really means is that people are wired to feel happy when they’re being kind.

    3    . Nobody wants to read yet another article about how the world is falling to pieces. Emphasize the good that’s being done at your organization so that your donors feel empowered, not depressed.

Since we give in part because it solidifies our connections to others, make sure that your communication with your donors is personal and specific (i.e. begin correspondence with “Dear Anna,” not “Dear Donor”). Prioritize community by finding ways to connect with your supporters on a personal level and give them the opportunity to interact with each other, whether it’s through a monthly video call or a donor appreciation night.     4    .

Remember that, at base, all philanthropic work is fundamentally a social act, so aim to make your donors feel like they’re a part of a broader community in which they are included, valued, and seen.

7 . A flexible patch could help people with voice disorders talk

The human voice, with its unique ability to attract audiences, express love and sometimes annoy neighbors, is a delibate thing. Doppler’s vocal cords can easily get damaged by stress, infections, or overuse.     1    . According to a 2005 study, 30% of the population will experience a voice disorder at some point in their life.

Researchers from the University of California, Los Angeles, have developed a soft patch that attaches to the neck, detecting muscle movements and translating them into clear speech using machine-learning algorithms. Even though the device is still in the early stages, it could be a significant improvement over existing communication aids for those who have lost their voice.     2     More complex aids such as electrolarynxes, external devices held against the throat, or surgical options, can be invasive or require special training to use. This patch would theoretically be able to clean all the obstacles.

The patch works based on the magneto-elastic (磁弹性的) effect When magnetic nanoparticles are mixed into flexible materials like elastic or silicone, stretching the material can change its magnetic properties. Every time the material changes shape, the particles either rotate or move against each other, altering the material’s magnetic strength. The patch, with its copper coil border that creates a stable magnetic field, can precisely track these changes.

    3     In a trial with eight participants, the researchers captured the signals as the subjects spoke and mouthed five different sentences (including: “Hope your experiments are going well!”, “Merry Christmas!” and “I love you!”). They then trained a machine-learning model to recognize the distinct patterns of the electrical signals associated with each sentence. This algorithm was then able to predict which of the five sentences the participants spoke — whether aloud or in silence — with more than 90% accuracy.

The patch is also designed to be user-friendly. It stays on even when the skin is sweaty and can be worn for 40 minutes without getting too warm.

However, there is more work to be done. For now the device can only recognize five pre-trained phrases.     4     To make it practical at scale, the researchers will need to collect a lot more data.

Have you ridden an electric bike? If not, you should probably stop reading this article and go find one. Hire one on the street. Borrow your neighbour’s. Steal one if you     1    . Sitting on the saddle, with the help of the motor, you will magically become half as old and twice as fit. You will feel like Lance Armstrong in his prime after an appointment with his doctor. And this,     2     it turns out, is all about the bike.

Electric cars get the hype, but in 2021, e-bikes far outsold them in the US and nearly matched battery vehicles in the UK. They democratise cycling,     3     (convert) those who don’t want to arrive at their destination sweaty and exhausted. On an e-bike, hills are no problem. You can carry a couple of kids as passengers and transport 150kg of cargo. Under UK law, the motor cuts out above 15.5mph, but you can still make short trips with ease.

E-bikes have reinvented the wheel, in a helpful way. They break the dynamic of cyclists versus other road users,     4     nearly everyone can now be a cyclist. I     5     (convince) the main reason more people don’t ride e-bikes is that they don’t know about them. A mile on     6     produces fewer carbon emissions than the food required to cycle a mile on a pedal bike.

But it’s not all good news. The London Fire Brigade has been called to an e-bike or e-scooter fire on average every two days this year. Tragically, in January, a 21-year-old woman became the first person     7     (die) in an e-bike fire in London.

The rise of rental e-bikes has also annoyed pedestrians, who find them     8     (discard) on pavements like giant cigarette butts, obstructing buggies(童车) and wheelchairs. Also, the sector has even been problematic for investors. VanMoof a Dutch company     9     chic e-bikes were popular in the pandemic—went bankrupt this week,     10     having proclaimed itself “the most funded e-bike company in the world” when it raised $128m in 2021.

The Language of Lying

“Sorry, my phone died.” “It’s nothing. I’m fine.” “I love you.”

We hear anywhere from 10 to 200 lies a day, and we spent much of our history coming up with ways to detect them, from medieval torture devices to polygraphs, blood-pressure and breathing monitors, voice-stress     1     and eye trackers. But although such tools have worked under certain circumstances, most can be fooled with enough preparation, and none are considered reliable enough to even be admissible in court. But, what if the problem is not with the     2    , but the underlying assumption that lying brings about physiological changes? What if we took a more direct     3    , using communication science to analyze the lies themselves?

Psychologically speaking, we lie partly to paint a better picture of ourselves, connecting our fantasies to the person we wish we were rather than the person we are. But while our brain is busy dreaming, it’s letting plenty of signals     4     by. Our     5     mind only controls about 5% of our cognitive function, including communication while the other 95% occurs beyond our awareness. According to the literature on reality monitoring, stories based on imagined experiences are qualitatively different from those based on real experiences. This suggests that creating a false story about a personal topic takes work and results in a different pattern of language use.

A technology known as linguistic text analysis has helped to     6     three such common patterns in the subconscious language of deception.

First, liars mention themselves less when making     7     statements. They write or talk more about others, often using the third person to     8     themselves from their lie, which sounds more false: “Absolutely no party took place at this house,” or “Nobody hosted a party here.”

Second, liars tend to be more     9    , because on a subconscious level, they feel guilty about lying. For example, a liar might say something like, “Sorry, my stupid phone battery died. I hate that thing.”

Third, liars tend to use longer sentence structure, inserting irrelevant but     10     sounding details in order to pad the lie. A President confronted with a scandal claimed: “I can say, categorically, that this investigation indicates that no one on the White House staff, no one in this administration presently employed was involved in this very odd incident.”