3 . Born on her family’s farm in Ray, North Dakota, Mary Sherman Morgan had been helping her father with farm work before she could attend the small-town schoolhouse. Being a few years behind didn’t hold her back and she graduated from high school with honors. Aware of her intelligence, she ran away from Ray to attend Minot State University as a chemistry major, where her skill was evident.

The outbreak of World War II resulted in a national shortage of chemists and scientists. In spite of the fact that she was still a student and a woman, she was offered a job as a chemical analyst due to her talents, producing explosives(爆炸物)for the wartime effort. She put her degree on hold and moved to Ohio, taking on the dangerous job of analyzing unstable chemicals to produce weapons.

After the war ended there was a fall in demand for explosives, so she made a move to the field of aeronautics, moving to California to work for NAA(North American Aviation). The only woman out of 900 engineers, she was soon promoted to a role which involved calculating the performance of rocket propellants(推进剂)and designing speciality fuels to work with different engines. However, never having returned to complete her degree, she was not afforded the rank or higher pay of an engineer, even though she had all the skills and knowledge of one.

Her experience with propellants meant that when NAA was tasked to find a fuel capable of lifting the redesigned Redstone missiles into space, Mogan was appointed technical lead on the project. National pride was on the line, so Morgan set about investigating fuels. After countless trails, she finally designed her own mixture, which was named Hydyne.

Hydyne tested well with the Redstone missiles and subsequently other aircraft(飞行器), such as Jupiter-C rockets, proving to be a quick solution to getting to space without a total rocket redesign. The fuel made the first successful US satellite launch possible, even if Morgan silently slipped away from her success, retiring to focus on her family and leaving her chemistry career behind.

5 . If you’re a parent, you’re well aware of just how many challenges virtual schooling presents. It’s incredibly stressful to get your kids to pay attention in their “classrooms”. Well, now there’s another thing you need to worry about: hackers. As more school districts rely on remote learning, they’re increasingly becoming targets for cybercriminals.

Believe it or not, your email address is actually a hacker’s primary method of attaining your families’ personal information. That’s why you need to be on the lookout for phishing emails. These emails appear to be from a legal company you’re familiar with—like your bank, credit card company, an online store, or, yes, a school—but are actually from a hacker.

However, there are a few tricks to decode if an email is fake or not. According to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), these emails often “tell a story to trick you into clicking on a link or opening an attachment.” If you receive an email asking you to update your account, change your password, or make a payment, do a little digging first and contact the company directly to ensure that it is indeed legal.

There are indeed some alarming things a hacker can do when they steal your children’s information. According to FTC, “a child’s Social Security number can be used by identity thieves to apply for government benefits, open bank and credit card accounts or apply for a loan, which may go unnoticed for years—usually until they’re adults and attempt to open a credit card.” To make matters worse, a criminal doesn’t even need the child’s complete information to cook up a new identity. “Known as ‘synthetic identity theft’, the thief grabs a Social Security number and combines it with a fake name, address, phone number, and more,” explains the Identity Theft Resource Center, “That makes it a little harder for victims and law enforcement to notice the problem in the first place or take action after the fact.”

6 . How would you feel if you were invited to the moon? If you found a gold coin, would you save it, give it to charity or use it for a holiday? Personality quizzes of this kind, known as “psychometrics”, have bothered many job seekers. Now, it is being applied to the oldest problem in finance: will a borrower repay?

In rich countries, lenders use credit scores to weigh risk. But just 7% of Africans and 13% of South Asians are covered by credit bureaus (征信机构). Bailey Klinger of the Entrepreneurial Finance Lab (EFL), which explores new kinds of credit data, argues that psychometrics could include many more people in the financial system. Everyone has a personality, after all.

Judging character is not new. Psychometrics attempts to make it a science. The model developed by EFL has undergone many tests and adapted to different cultures. Its collected data reflect something unnoticed. For instance, young optimists are risky, but old ones are a safe bet.

Clever design cuts cheating. There are no obvious right answers; responses are cross-checked for consistency. The model monitors mouse movements for signs of indecision or distraction. When borrowers lie to get a loan, they often do so in predictable ways. In an EFL test, people are shown pictures of five drinks and asked which one they would be. Choosing water over something with small bubbles may be a sign of cheating.

This sounds fanciful, but there is evidence that it works. In one Indonesian bank, combining psychometrics with existing customer data cut default (违约) rates for small businesses by 45%. A study by the World Bank found that EFL’s model increased lending to those without a credit history.

The technique needs further development. At present, turning to credit bureaus is still the best way to tell if somebody will repay a loan. But bureaus improve more slowly than technology. Lenders will find ever more ways to look into their customers’ souls.

7 . HANDSTITCHED WORLDS: THE CARTOGRAPHY OF QUILTS

Quilts (床罩) are a narrative art; with themes that are political, spiritual, communal, or commemorative, they are infused with history and memory, mapping out intimate stories and legacies through a handcrafted language of design. Handstitched Worlds: The Cartography of Quilts is an invitation to read quilts as maps, tracing the paths of individual histories that illuminate larger historic events and cultural trends.

Spanning the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries, this insightful and engaging exhibition brings together 18 quilts from the collection of the American Folk Art Museum, New York, representing a range of materials, motifs, and techniques from traditional early-American quilts to more contemporary sculptural assemblages. The quilts in Handstitched Worlds show us how this too-often overlooked medium balances creativity with tradition, individuality with collective zeitgeist. Like a road map, these unique works offer a path to a deeper understanding of the American cultural fabric.

Number of Works:18 quilts

Organized by: American Folk Art Museum, New York

Approximate size:175-200 linear feet

Security: Moderate security

Participation Fee: Please inquire

Shipping: IA&A makes all arrangements; exhibitors pay outgoing shipping costs within the contiguous U.S.

Booking Period:12 weeks

Tour: June 2021—August2024

Contact: TravelingExhibitions@ArtsandArtists.org

Leigh Yawkey Woodson Art Museum, Wausau, WI

June 12, 2021—August 29, 2021

Washington State Historical Society, Tacoma, WA

September 17, 2021—January 23, 2022

Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City, UT

February 19, 2022—May 14, 2022

Fort Wayne Muesum of Art, Fort Wayne, IN

June 18, 2022—September 11, 2022

AVAILABLE

October 2022—January 2023

Dane G. Hansen Memorial Museum, Logan, KS

February 17,2023—May 14, 2023

AVAILABLE

June 2023—December 2023

Lauren Rogers Museum of Art, Laurel, MS

January 30, 2024—April 21, 2024

AVAILABLE

May 2024—August 2024

All tour dates can be customized to meet your scheduling needs. Please contact Traveling Exhibitions @ Artsand Artists.org for more information.