A Better Way to Get Kids in Libraries: Stop Fining Them.

Over a million kids in New York City have public library cards. But about a fifth of them have blocked accounts due to fines.

It’s not so hard to get blocked. Your card gets suspended if you hit $15 in fines. At the New York Public Library, children under 18 years old are fined 10 cents a day per book (that’s a 25 cent fine for adults). And all media, like DVDs and tapes, will cost you $3 for every late day. For many kids, they’re too intimidated to either talk to their parents or librarians about it, so they just stop going.

New York Public Library President Tony Marx says library access should never be about who can afford to pay the fines.

“We’ve heard stories of parents saying to their kids, ‘We don’t want you to borrow books because you might be late with them and then you’ll have fines to worry about.’ That’s crazy!” said Marx.

Marx is currently on the look-out for some creative ways to not fine kids, but still hold them accountable. One idea he’s toying with: put a hold on a child’s account until they simply return their overdue materials, no fines involved. Five years ago, Marx granted city-wide amnesty to children with fines, and he says they saw 80,000 kids return to the library over time. Now, he’s trying to secure a $10 million endowment to get rid of fines in perpetuity.

Donald Trump faces backlash as he reveals 'Fake News Awards' winners.

President highlights journalists’ errors despite anger from some in his own party over his treatment of the media

Donald Trump, who has routinely peddled conspiracy theories and mistruths from the office of the presidency, sought to question the accuracy of the media on Wednesday by unveiling the so-called “Fake News Awards”.

The president used his preferred medium of Twitter to announce “the winners”, which ranged from minor errors by journalists on social media to news reports that later invited corrections, with the New York Times and CNN the most frequently named.

The “awards” were revealed on the Republican National Committee’s website, which swiftly crashed as a result of the attention, and prompted swift backlash, including from his own party.

Much of the list centered around reporting on the investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 election. The president has repeatedly dismissed the inquiry as “fake news”, despite the consensus of the US government and its allies that Moscow worked to sway the presidential election in Trump’s favor.

Shortly after making the awards public, Trump offered mild praise for a faction of the media, tweeting: “Despite some very corrupt and dishonest media coverage, there are many great reporters I respect and lots of GOOD NEWS for the American people to be proud of!”

While Trump’s attacks on press freedom date back to his candidacy, his decision to hold “Fake News Awards” marked a bizarre spectacle even by the standards of an impulsive president.

Trump had initially announced the awards at the start of the new year, with plans to hold them on 8 January. The date was later pushed to 17 January, as White House aides struggled in the interim to explain the event’s purpose or whether it would even take place.

Trump has often used his bully pulpit to highlight errors in the media, even when news organizations have taken steps to correct and apologize for any inaccuracies, and he has labeled the press the “enemy of the American people”. Trump has yet to acknowledge any of his lies, which have been tracked in an exhaustive list by the New York Times and underscore the president’s near daily disconnect from the truth. 

The move was nonetheless prime fodder for Trump’s base, which has rallied behind the president’s extraordinary assault on the first amendment. Polling has found Americans relatively split on the issue of trust in the news, with registered Republican voters far more likely to believe in media bias.

Two prominent Republican lawmakers did, however, rebuke Trump’s treatment of the media leading up to his “Fake News Awards”. John McCain and Jeff Flake, both senators from Arizona and among Trump’s most vocal critics, implored the president to retreat from his war against the press.

In an op-ed published Tuesday, McCain said Trump’s attacks on the media “provided cover for repressive regimes to follow suit”. 

“The phrase ‘fake news’ – granted legitimacy by an American president – is being used by autocrats to silence reporters, undermine political opponents, stave off media scrutiny and mislead citizens,” McCain wrote.

“We cannot afford to abdicate America’s longstanding role as the defender of human rights and democratic principles throughout the world.”

Flake, who is retiring from the Senate at the end of the year, took aim at Trump in a damning speech from the Senate floor.

“An American president who cannot take criticism, who must constantly deflect and distort and distract, who must find someone else to blame, is charting a very dangerous path,” Flake said.

“It is a testament to the condition of our democracy that our own president uses words infamously spoken by Josef Stalin to describe his enemies.”

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With Scarlett Johansson front and centre, finally it's Black Widow's time to shine.

Long-delayed plans for a female-led Marvel superhero movie following Wonder Woman’s triumph should deliver one of the studio’s biggest hitters

It’s not difficult to follow Hollywood’s logic in avoiding female-led superhero movies for most of the past 20 years. Whenever studios have taken risks on characters such as Catwoman (in 2004, with Halle Berry in the leathers) and Elektra (2005, with Jennifer Garner as the famed assassin), the box-office results have been paltry and the critical brickbats relentless.

Of course, when I say it is possible to follow the logic, this is not the same thing as saying such blinkered thinking is logical, which led us to a point where there were no major female-led comic-book flicks released in cinemas between 2005 and the debut of Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman last year. For, by the same rationale, Hollywood ought to have banned all male-led sci-fi romps following the failure of Cowboys and Aliens to light up multiplexes in 2011. It did not, of course. When a female-led movie fails, the gender of the lead protagonist is immediately flagged up. When a male-led film heads straight for the DVD bargain bin, other aspects are highlighted.

It should not have taken the success of Jenkins’ warm-hearted DCEU origins tale for rival Marvel to finally take a chance on a solo outing for Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow (to be fair, the studio did already have the Brie Larsson-led Captain Marvel on its slate for 2019), but we can only assume there is a link. Johansson is a huge star in her own right, arguably better known than any of her fellow Avengers bar Robert Downey Jr, and yet she has only ever appeared in ensemble efforts within the Marvel Cinematic Universe. So confident were Paramount of her pulling power that they cast her as the lead in the ill-conceived anime remake Ghost in the Shell last year, yet Marvel continued to procrastinate over delivering a film that would have seen the star of Under the Skin and Lucy take centre stage in her best-known role.

 A talent for taking down the bad guys … Johansson in Lucy. Photograph: Universal/Everett/Rex

No longer. Variety reported last week that Marvel is finally moving (tentatively) ahead with a solo Black Widow film the best part of a decade after studio chief Kevin Feige first indicated an interest, with TiMER’s Jac Schaeffer writing the script. Not much is known about the project, but it’s encouraging to see that the studio is finally moving in the right direction.

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With Johansson in the role, Black Widow surely now has the potential to become one of Marvel’s big hitters. The more fascinating corners of Romanoff’s twisted psyche (as seen in the comics) have barely been explored in the Avengers movies, beyond a brief mention of her chequered past as an assassin and spy in Captain America: The Winter Soldier and a somewhat controversial reference to her darkling origin as a creation of the sinister Soviet agent production line known as the Red Room in Avengers: Age of Ultron.

The obvious direction for Black Widow’s debut solo outing would be a straight-up origins tale detailing how the one-time KGB spy and assassin Natasha Romanoff came to join SHIELD. The only problem here is that Johansson is not old enough to have been born in the USSR, as her character was in the comic books. The print version is said to boast anti-ageing powers, but it has never been clear that the MCU iteration shares these, so to suddenly discover them would be an unexpected development to say the least.

A more suitable adventure for the superhero might be to imagine her caught up in a conspiracy involving people from her past, perhaps referencing the 1967 comic book run The Valiant Also Die. The early effort saw Romanoff brought face to face with her one-time husband, a man she thought long dead, who has become an evil communist version of Captain America known as the Red Guardian. There is space in that narrative for Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye, an obvious candidate to appear alongside Romanoff, especially given his criminal underuse in most other MCU entries. Again, the cold war-era storyline might need updating.

A more recent entry that could provide for easy pickings is the 2010 Name of the Rose storyline, which saw Natasha targeted by a mysterious assailant. While trying to discover exactly who is trying to kill her, the SHIELD agent must examine her loyalties to fellow Avengers as well as questioning her own mental reliability after years of being brainwashed and conditioned by the Soviets.

Whatever line Marvel goes for, there should be no doubt that the star of a future Black Widow movie deserves this moment in the spotlight. There are few more charismatic screen presences in Hollywood than Johansson at full pelt, barrelling through cityscapes and taking down bad guys with immaculately choreographed martial arts moves. That Marvel gets to branch out into a hard-boiled noir twist on the superhero genre, potentially a radical new direction for the MCU, only adds to the win factor.

image credit the guardian

Babies can learn the value of persistence by watching grownups stick with a challenge.

When you quit in frustration, little eyes are watching and learning. Victor Maschek/Shutterstock.com

Julia Leonard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

You’re at home trying to make fresh tomato sauce, but can’t seem to get the tomatoes out of their plastic container from the grocery store. The bottom latch is not opening, so you pull harder. Although you’ve never seen this type of tomato container before, you have opened many similar ones in the past. After a minute of trying, you stop to consider the situation – should you keep pushing and pulling? Should you ask a friend for help? Should you give up on fresh tomatoes and just open a can?

We make decisions like this all the time. How much effort should we expend on something? We have only so much time and energy in the day. Five minutes fumbling with the container is five minutes taken away from reading a book, talking to your family or sleeping. In any given situation, you must decide how hard to try.

Developmental cognitive scientists like me are interested in how we make decisions about effort. In particular, how do young children, who are constantly encountering new situations, decide how hard to try?

If at first you don’t succeed, then what?

The importance of effort extends beyond our daily decisions about time allocation. Recent studies show that self-control and persistence increase academic outcomes independent of IQ. Even our personal beliefs about effort can affect academic outcomes. Children who think effort leads to achievement outperform those who believe ability is a fixed trait.

Given the link between persistence and academic success, decisions about effort are particularly important in childhood. Yet relatively little research has explored how young children learn what’s worth the effort.

We all know that infants are keen observers of the social world. But they’re not just idly watching; infants are tiny learning machines. They can generalize such abstract concepts as causal relationships and social roles from just a few examples. Even a 15-month-old infant can outperform a high-level computer in such tasks.

Could infants also make broad, generalizable inferences from a few examples when it comes to effort? If so, then maybe “grit” isn’t simply a character trait. Maybe it’s flexible and adaptable based on social context.

Just give up… or push through failure?

To explore this question, my colleagues and I showed 15-month-old babies one of two things: an experimenter working hard to achieve two different goals (getting a toy out of a container and getting a keychain off a carabiner), or an experimenter who effortlessly reached each goal.

Then we introduced the baby to a novel “music” toy that looked like it could be activated by pushing a big button on top. (The button could be pressed down but didn’t actually activate anything.) Out of sight of the babies, we turned on the music toy with a hidden button so that they heard that the toy could make music. We gave the babies the music toy and left the room. Then coders, who didn’t know which condition each baby was in, watched videotapes of the experiment and counted how many times babies tried to activate the toy by pressing the button.

Infants in the study try to activate a musical toy. Julia Anne Leonard, CC BY-ND

Across one study and a preregistered replication (182 babies in total), babies who had seen an adult persist and succeed pushed the button about twice as many times as those who saw an adult effortlessly succeed. In other words, babies learned that effort was valuable after watching just two examples of an adult working hard and succeeding.

Part of what’s exciting about this finding is that the babies didn’t just imitate the adult’s actions; instead, they generalized the value of effort to a novel task. The experimenter never demonstrated pushing a button or trying to make music. Instead the babies learned from different examples of effortful actions (opening a container or unlatching a carabineer) that the new toy probably also required persistence.

However, most of the time when a parent is frustrated, he’s focused on the task at hand and not on trying to teach his child the value of effort. Can babies also learn the value of effort from adults who are not deliberately demonstrating to them?

To address this question, we ran the experiment again, eliminating any pedagogical cues such as eye contact or child-friendly speech. Again, the infants tried harder on their own task after seeing an adult persist and succeed. However, the effects were much weaker when the adult didn’t use any pedagogical cues.

Persistence is a trait that helps kids in school and beyond. wavebreakmedia/Shutterstock.com

Learning tenacity by watching tenacity

Educators and parents want to know how to foster persistence when children encounter challenges. Our study suggests that persistence can be learned from adult models. Babies attentively watch those around them, and use that information to guide their own effortful behavior.

Yet babies don’t simply learn they should try harder at everything. Just like grownups, babies make rational decisions about effort. If they observe someone trying hard and succeeding, they try harder. When they see someone effortlessly succeed, they infer that effort may not be worthwhile.

So what does this mean for parents? We can’t presume that our results would work for parents in the home just as they work in the laboratory. However, if you know your toddler can achieve a task if she tries hard, it might be worth modeling effort and success for her first. Let us know if it works! We’d also like to know how lasting these effects can be, whether infants might generalize the value of effort to a broader range of contexts and how adult models of effort compare with explicit messages about the importance of effort. We hope to explore these questions in future studies.

Finally, this study suggests that parents don’t have to make things look easy all the time. The next time you struggle to open that tomato container, it’s OK, maybe even beneficial, to let your child see you sweat.

Julia Leonard, Ph.D. Student in Brain and Cognitive Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article with permission.

Can an app that rewards you for avoiding Facebook help beat smartphone addiction?

The Hold app – already used by 40% of students in Norway – allows users to earn rewards such as cinema tickets for not using their phone. We put it to the test

It’s March 2012, the middle of exam term and my friend is in despair. Why? She can’t access her Facebook.

Nordic app Hold is hoping to combat such examples of student smartphone addiction. It rewards users for not looking at their phones on campus – a task so difficult for my zombified-friend that she resorted to using a website that locks her out of all social media accounts.

In Norway, 40% of students use Hold. One in eight people are addicted to their phones and, at university, this can be toxic. Using Hold requires self-restraint: press a button and the app will time how long you refrain from using your phone, but there are no punishments if you do. If you don’t, however, you will be rewarded with points that can be redeemed at partner businesses – you can cash in for cinema tickets, for example.

Since I’m still a student, I decided to put the app to the test. It’s harder than I imagine – I am the sort of person, it turns out, who just needs to look at this email right now... And this WhatsApp. And my Instagram. And, er … Candy Crush.

Why doesn’t the app just block me from distractions, so I’m not tempted by them? “We are trying to change long-term habits, not force people,” says creator Maths Mathiesen. “We want their relationship to their phones to change.”

By the end of the week, the app hadn’t changed my phone-checking habits, but it did make me seriously question my phone usage. Resisting my phone for 20 minutes (the threshold at which you can start earning points for rewards) proved excruciating – but it also highlighted how much looking at my phone for a second disrupts my concentration span.

Hold is still building up its network of sponsors in the UK, with beta versions being rolled out across universities in London over the next month. The rewards on offer are currently quite limited – one of them is pencils – although I’m told that Nordic students have won trips around the world. But I suppose the real reward is not spending £50,000 on a degree, only to end up with a bad grade thanks to your need to compulsively refresh, scroll and repeat.

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World's Largest Air Purifier build (by China) .

A 100-metre high air purification tower in Sian in Shaanxi province has helped cut back air pollution levels within the town, preliminary results recommend

An experimental tower over a hundred metres (328 feet) high in northern China – dubbed the world’s biggest air apparatus by its operators – has brought an obvious improvement in air quality, consistent with the man of science leading the project, as authorities request ways that to tackle the nation’s chronic air pollution drawback.

The tower has been in-built Sian in Shaanxi province and is undergoing testing by researchers at the Institute of Earth atmosphere at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The head of the analysis, Cao Junji, aforementioned enhancements in air quality had been determined over a section of ten sq. kilometres (3.86 sq. miles) within the town over the past few months and also the tower has managed to supply over ten million boxlike metres (353 million boxlike feet) of unpolluted air every day since its launch. Cao superimposed that on severely contaminated days the tower was ready to cut back air pollution near moderate levels.

The newspaper cited head of the analysis Cao Junji as oral communication that the tower has created over ten million boxlike meters (353 million boxlike feet) of unpolluted air per day since its launch in 2017.

He mentioned air quality-related enhancements over a section of 10 sq. kilometers (3.86 sq. miles) in Sian that still depends on coal in terms of heating, one thing that adds considerably to the city's pollution.

Best ways to Prepare for a Winter Storm.

Are Mother Nature's snow and ice spectaculars touch your space exhausting this year? Having some emergency provides on-hand will prevent plenty of discomfort and hassle once the storm hits. fill up on things you wish to survive while not departure your house for some days, also as tools to assist you permit if necessary. Once the storm begins, cuddle up, keep well-read, and keep heat

Accumulate Before the Storme.

 i) Get a snow shovel.

Get a high quality snow shovel therefore you'll be able to dig yourself out. you will additionally have to be compelled to shovel to dig your automotive out once the storm is over.

ii) Flashlights and Battery powered lamps.

Put contemporary batteries in your lamps and flashlights if a storm is coming back. choose model that may power your telephone if you'll

iii) Gather some candles and holders.

In case your electric lamp suddenly provides out otherwise you run out of batteries, you'll light-weight your home the old school method.

iv) Fill some shelves with non-perishable food.

Stock up on canned soups and vegetables, pulverized food, and grains like rice and alimentary paste. make certain you've got enough to last your family a minimum of 3 or four days

v) Fill up some containers of water.

If you are troubled concerning the pipes state change, top off on some water. you'll pass away bottled, or in gallon jars

vi) Gather blankets and warm clothing.

You may have already got this stuff, however keep in mind you'll would like enough blankets to stay you heat with none heat and in adverse conditions.

vii) your first aid kit.

You ne'er grasp what reasonably injuries or emergencies can happen once the lights leave. obtain a primary aid kit if you do not have one, and familiarise yourself with the contents.

viii) Get your hands on a camping stove or grill.

A gas-powered inhabitation stove may be a wise investment for any emergency scenario

ix) Find some matches.

You can use these to light-weight your stove, inhabitation stove, and candles. don't have faith in lighters, as these will run out of fuel or break down only too simply.

x) A working phone you can use.

Get a conductor radiotelephone charger if you'll. land line phones work throughout power outages as a result of the ability comes from the public utility.

xi) Stock up on diapers, formula, and baby food.

If you have got associate degree babe, make certain you have got a number of days of provides for them.

xii)Get a refill on your prescription medications.

If you are not due for a refill, decision your doctor and make a case for that you are troubled regarding running out throughout the storm. Get enough to last you for many days.

xiii) Consider investing in a battery operated radio.

It's best to not have faith in cell service or wireless connections throughout a storm. With a radio, you'll get news while not wall power. make certain the batteries ar smart. you'll purchase a motion charging radio, as you'll with a electric lamp.

Planning In Advance

i) Winterize your home.

Protecting your house and outbuildings from the cold will prevent plenty of cash and trouble down the road. Insulate walls and attics, calk and weather-strip doors and windows, and putting in storm windows or cowl windows with plastic.

ii) Invest in a carbon monoxide detector.

If you ever have to be compelled to run a gas cooker within your home for warmth or preparation, you may undoubtedly desire a carbon monoxide gas detector on-hand. carbon monoxide gas is odourless and colorless, but deadly

iii) Keep your supplies current.

Check the batteries in your flashlights each therefore typically, and make certain you have got enough potable water and non-perishable food to last your family a minimum of forty eight hours. Once per annum or 2, replace your current stock of canned food with a contemporary batch.

iv) Consider investing in a generator.

If the ability oftentimes goes out wherever you reside, think about obtaining a transportable or stationary electrical generator. Generators price anyplace type $400 to $10,000 bucks

Staying Safe During the Storm.

i) Keep the heat in.

Stop your pipes from phase transition. Go around your house and switch on each regulator in order that it's dripping simply slightly. Keeping the water moving through the pipes ought to facilitate stop them from phase transition.

Seal up any drafts. place towels at very cheap of any doors that have a spot, or around loose windows. If your windows ar single-paned, shut the curtains or pin a blanket up over them to stay the warmth in.

ii) Keep yourself warm.

Bundle up in heat garments and keep close to your idolized ones. If you are tired a space along you may facilitate keep one another heat together with your body heat.

iii) Stay updated.

Use social media for updates. If you do not have access to a battery-operated radio, follow national and native disaster agencies  on Facebook and Twitter. Check sporadically for updates.

iv) Keep the fridge closed.
v) Plan some entertainment.