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For $200, you can now invest in the eco-fashion label Christy Dawn. The label is selling "plots" in the organic, sustainable cotton farm in India that provides the raw materials for their clothing. At the end of the season, you're paid back with store credit. If the harvest is good, you might get back more than the initial $200 you invested. On the other hand, if it's a bad year for cotton, you could lose most or all of your money. 

Store credit is actually a pretty good return on investment, if you like Christy Dawn's style—loose, flowing, bohemian—think 1960s hippies for the modern world. Their clothes are expensive (a dress runs about $200–300), but people with $200 to spend can become part of the solution to a big environmental problem. Manufacturing fabric is an energy-intensive, chemically-laden process when done on an industrial scale. Even so-called "natural" fabrics like cotton are terrible for the environment, using vast amounts of resources. For instance, it typically takes up to 2,700 litres of water and produces about 2.6kg of CO₂ to make a single cotton t-shirt.

So Christy Dawn began their own cotton farm in India to oversee the environmentally sustainable production of raw materials. You can support their efforts, and get a good return on investment even if it's a bad year for cotton. Long-term, you're earning a more sustainable Earth to live on.

Professional cyclist Greg Lemond said, "It doesn't get any easier; you just get faster."

Lemond is a 3-time winner of the Tour Dr France. He also won a great many other cycling races. He is considered by many to be the all-time greatest American cyclist. While other cyclists have been caught cheating via blood doping, Lemond was so strongly opposed to cheating that he quit his team when his teammates were found breaking the rules.

Cycling is an endurance sport, meaning effort matters as much as strategy. The Tour de France is so hard that in 1967 a race leader died from over-exertion. So when Lemond says it doesn't get easier, he's speaking from experience. 

Raising children can be challenging. Here are some helpful tips. If you don't have kids, then think about when you were a kid.  

First, praising a child’s accomplishments boosts their self-esteem.

Children develop their understanding of themselves through their parents’ attitudes. Everything counts: parents’ words, body language, voice. 

If you praise children for even small accomplishments, you will make them feel worthy and proud. If you trust your children to do things themselves, they will feel capable and strong. On the other hand, if you compare your child to others or belittle them, children might feel worthless and doubt themselves. 

Second, try to compliment more than you criticize 

Imagine you have a boss who always criticizes and never praises you even when you are trying really hard.

Think of how many times a day a parent reacts negatively to something that their child is doing. It's a good idea to catch a child doing something right and praise them. For example, “You washed the dishes without being asked! Great job!” or “You were very patient with your homework today, even if you don’t like this subject that much. That’s very good!” 

Third, be consistent with limits and discipline

Children will test boundaries. It is important to set limits for them so they learn self-control.

Establishing clear limits helps children to understand expectations. It's better to set a clear rule, for example, no computer games until their homework is complete. It's also good to have a clear system of consequences if they misbehave. For example, no dessert if they don't eat their vegetables.

Without white and yellow lines on streets and roads, we wouldn't know where the lanes are, or where to turn or stop or walk, etc. Car accidents would be much more frequent, many with fatalities.

A specialized sector of the construction industry paints lane markings on roads. One company in Michigan, PK Contracting, estimates that one worker paints about 400,000 ft (122,000 m) of lines every day. Over the 6-month construction season, the company stripes and re-stripes about 50,000 mi (80,500 km) of roads. Put those markings end-to-end and you could cross America 16 times.

Those figures don't include crosswalks, turn arrows, stop lines and all the other markings you see. For straight lines stretched down a road, the workers use a special painting truck that paints lines as it drives. But they can't use the painting trucks in tight spaces, or for curves and arrows. So every one of those lines and shapes is painted by hand using big stencils and either spray paint or rollers.

It requires precision to create straight lines, a cross-hatched zone or a set of arrows with multiple stencils. The painters need to be very skilled workers. You can see them action at the "Continue reading" link below.

According to the Harvard Business Review, asking for a promotion can be nerve-wracking. How do you prepare for that conversation with your boss? What information should you have at the ready? And how exactly do you make your case?

The first step is to think through what you want. Do you want more power? More money? More managerial responsibility? Also, consider getting feedback from a personal "board of directors" on your strengths and weaknesses. Speak to peers to try to measure your reputation. Find out how others successfully pressed their cases for promotion. 

Once you’ve clarified exactly what you’re looking for, build a compelling case for why you deserve to move up. Consider preparing a one-or-two-page memo that clearly outlines your track record. The memo’s bullet points should provide metrics of the impact you’ve had, descriptions of solutions you’ve delivered, and financial outcomes for which you’ve been responsible.

However, don’t assume that asking for a promotion is a one-and-done discussion. It is usually a series of ongoing conversations. Finally, do not get discouraged if you don’t get what you want right away. Patience often pays off.

New smartphones come on the market at least every year. Each model has its own pros and cons, giving that company the opportunity to beat out its nearest competitors for a share of the market. But it's a tough market! If you were going to introduce a new phone, you'd need to make it pretty special.

That's exactly the task required here: you and your teacher are going to come up with a new phone and create an ad that will persuade consumers to buy it.

Try to include two or more of the following power words:

• hottest;
• effortless;
• daring;
• savings;
• attractive; and/or
• phenomenal.

Dr. Nhung Tran-Davies was only five years old when she needed to flee home because of the Vietnam War. She and her family spent eight months in a refugee camp in Malaysia. Then an Alberta church sponsored their immigration to Canada.

Nhung arrived in Canada on a boat with 300 other refugees. She remembers it was nauseating and suffocating. 

At the airport gate, a little Canadian girl called Adrienne gave a doll to Nhung. 

"This little girl presented a little gift... This doll lit up my heart and in that moment, it meant everything to me," says Nhung. After that, the girls stayed friends. This doll has also inspired Nhung to become a doctor and help others, as this girl has helped her.

"Knowing now that all that I have, and all that I've become, is because of this simple act of kindness, I live to this day to pay forward the kindness," she said. Nhung has also sponsored a refugee family, who were escaping the war in Syria. She gifted a doll to the youngest daughter in the family.

"It was my turn now, 40 years later, to be standing at the gates to give little Alma a doll. It was just an amazing, important moment for myself, but I think it meant something to her because I know that in 40 years it will be her turn to make Canada a more beautiful place," she said.

When we hear about the number of Olympics medals each country wins, we usually hear the total. The top five or six countries are almost always the same: the U.S., U.K., Russia, Germany, France and China. When you think about the huge population and wealth of those countries, it makes sense that they would win the most medals.

But this leaves smaller countries who perform better than their relative size and wealth out of the spotlight. Think of Australia, a country of 25 million. Compare that to America's 328 million. You might expect the U.S. to win well over ten times more medals than Australia. But that's not what happens.

So a more accurate representation of a nation's Olympic performance might be to look at the expected total. The Financial Times has put together a system that looks at a country's past medal counts, population size, and its GDP. The results are further refined by sport, given that some countries nearly always outperform others (think of gymnastics or table tennis). Putting all these things together provides a less-prejudicial view of each country's Olympic performance.

The Times has posted a real-time chart with a country's expected medal total compared to the actual ongoing total, showing the number of medals over or under expectations.

Take a look at that chart now.

Dogs have already been trained to smell drugs, cancer, and even blood sugar changes in people with diabetes. Now they're learning how to smell Covid-19. In trials, dogs detected the virus over 95% of the time, more accurately than rapid blood or swab tests. The dogs have even been able to detect Covid in people who aren't showing symptoms yet, which taking temperatures can't do.

Several countries around the world are working to develop these skills in dogs. To train them, sweat from people with Covid is collected and put on cottonballs. After they've learned to identify the scent, they then have to choose the cottonball with the sweat on it from lots of untreated cottonballs.

Even though the dogs are expensive, it actually costs less to train and use dogs for Covid detection than for other types of rapid testing. And one dog can cover a lot of space at once, effectively testing hundreds of people in a few minutes. More training and research is needed before the dogs will be used widely, but many hope that very soon dogs will be able to sniff around at airports and sports stadiums and other crowded places to catch Covid before it spreads.