1 . People around the world take celebrating seriously, and many of them are willing to go to great effort and expense to plan and participate in public celebrations.

Exactly when and where human beings began coming together in public to celebrate as a group can date back to hunter-gatherer societies, when success in the never-ending search for food, clothing, and shelter must have aroused the need to celebrate together.

Besides the need for food and survival, there are records of religious parades dating back to 3000 B.C. Parades were also used to demonstrate military power and celebrate military victories; to attract customers to events such as the circus by giving the public a sample of the entertainment; or to celebrate ethnic (民族的) connection and holidays. The New York Times of October 28, 1917, summed it up by saying, “If you take the parades out of history, you have precious little history left.”

Of course, many modern celebrations are not connected to any religion. In the Internet era, electronic communication makes it possible to organize celebrations almost instantly. “Flash mobs” are a new way of gathering and celebrating. Secretly planned online, they bring together tens, hundreds, or thousands of individuals to perform some unusual or funny act in a public place. Flash mobs not only reflect the increased speed of communication but also a lighter attitude to celebration. No longer is public celebrating something necessarily linked to human survival, religion, or deep traditions.

This does not mean, however, that modern celebrations are not socially conscious. One striking image inspiring community spirit is Edwards’ photograph of crowds in Australia, who were gathering in the rain for a music festival to raise funds for wildfire relief. Throughout history, across countries and cultures, celebrations are always worth significant amount of time and money spent planning, preparing, organizing, and carrying out an event. The priority given to celebrating seems to put it alongside food, shelter, love, and freedom as a basic need of humanity.

7 . Group Intelligence

Being smart doesn’t matter much if you’re working in a group, according to the first study to calculate collective intelligence — a group’s ability to succeed at a variety of tasks.

Surprisingly, in a team an individual’s intelligence does not have much to do with success in thought-based tasks such as visual puzzles and negotiating over limited resources, a set of recent experiments found.     1    

That also explains why groups with more women — who score higher on tests of social sensitivity — were more likely to stand out, said study leader Anita Williams Woolley, an expert in collective intelligence at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Particularly intelligent groups also had more people who took turns speaking, according to the study, published in the journal Science.

To test the conclusion, Woolley and colleagues recruited 699 volunteers and first measured each person’s intelligence and social sensitivity using standard psychological tests.     2     The results revealed that certain groups were better at all types of tasks, which is the “primary evidence for collective intelligence,” Woolley said.

    3     As guessed, the groups’ collective intelligence scores from the first round of tests predicted how they’d do on the following complex experiments, Woolley said.

    4     — especially as more decisions in fields such as business and the military are made in discussion-based settings, she said. For instance, knowing a group’s collective intelligence could be vital in a situation like starting a new business.

8 .

9 . We recently went to a friend’s backyard to meet her new puppy. He was lovely beyond words. Our friend was wearing smiles as she told us about his first days at home. It was truly puppy love.

Later that night, I walked behind my own dog to help her climb up the stairs, and heated up the homemade food that helps control her kidney (肾) disease. You can’t imagine these extra cares when you began raising a puppy. For me, I am lucky to know this more “mature” love. To love, and to be loved, by an old dog is truly an honor.

For a long time, I denied the fact that our dog was getting old, or I really didn’t notice that Skyler was getting older. But these days, there is no denying the fact. Sometimes, she will fall while eating from her bowl and wait patiently for someone to help her up.

I still remember the first days of Skyler. In the home, she always needed to be beside someone, with at least one part of her touching one part of you. At the park, it was different. If we started running toward the end of a field, she would cross the finish line before we had even made it halfway.

Now, at 15, Skyler still needs to be right beside you on the couch. But it is hard. It is sad to see this once fast, strong dog struggle to walk up the front steps or to see her begging eyes whenever she needs help to get up on the couch. Over the past few years, we have had to forgo certain family trips because we wanted to take care of her at home.

However, I know this experience has taught our children about sacrifice and unconditional love. It has taught me the same. Dogs give us unconditional love. The least we can do is give it back. There will likely be times of great sadness and hardship, but in the end, you will feel very lucky for the time you have together.

10 . Anyone who has felt a moment of joy when a favorite song comes on the radio at just the right moment or cried along with a singer expressing heartache will understand the emotional power of music. Now, a growing body of scientific evidence demonstrates that music can be _________ too.

In a review of 400 research papers looking into the _________ of music, Daniel Levitin, a psychologist and neuroscientist at McGill University in Montreal, found that playing and listening to music had mental and physical health _________, including improving our immune systems and reducing stress.

One 2007 study from a team of Spanish researchers found that listening to music _________ surgery had the effect in reducing pre-operative anxiety. It’s a negative emotion which can affect pain after an operation and _________ time. Another study, conducted in 2018 in Barcelona’s Hospital del Mar, found that _________ participating in a music therapy (疗法) program experienced significant decreases in tiredness, anxiety and breathing difficulties, as well as an increase in feelings of well-being.

Music can have a huge effect on helping sick _________ too. Ruth Hunston is a music therapist in the “play department”at the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London, England, who helps give young patients back some sense of _________.

“When children are in the hospital, their worlds get much _________,” says Hunston. “They’re having so many things done to them and around them, but music allows them to create something themselves. I’ve had lots of babies in the hospital making sounds because I am __________ to them, and they want more.”

The parents also become part of the therapeutic process. “What’s really lovely is when you go in and you start to make music, and the children invite their parents to join,” she says. “There is this beautiful __________ between everyone. Sometimes I will __________ and just watch them play, laugh and have fun.”

Finding those __________ moments is the therapist’s role, but as music therapist Sarah Rose Black notes, people have been connecting with music for their whole lives—she is just helping them __________ it again at a time when they need it most. “We are born to be __________ people.”