Dogs have long been famous for their powerful noses. For millennia, humans across many hunting cultures have employed dogs as trackers, marveling at their keen sense of smell. Today, scientific research has only confirmed the common knowledge that the domestic dog (Canis familiaris) is endowed with olfactory capabilities more acute than (1) that of the average human—up to 100,000 times more, in fact. In a 2005 study led by behavioral psychologists in Northern Ireland, dogs proved they just needed five footsteps to determine by smell which direction a person had walked on a given trail. While there may be little dispute regarding dogs’ impressive abilities to track scents, (2) how dogs themselves perceive odors remains a tantalizing topic of inquiry.

Among those investigating dogs’ cognitive relationship to olfaction are German researchers Juliane Brauer and Julia Belger. (3) In 2018 Brauer and Belger published a study in the Journal  of Comparative Psychology. In the study, they sought to learn if dogs mentally represent what they smell. (4) In other words, the scientists wondered whether dogs have expectations of what they search for or whether they simply (5) have followed a trail of positive stimuli.

Brauer and Belger’s study presented dogs of (6) various breeds ages, and levels of training with a violation-of-expectation test, in which dogs were tasked with tracking and fetching a familiar toy hidden in a room. Each dog, following an odor trail left by the researchers, found either the expected (baseline) toy or an unfamiliar (surprise) one. (7) Therefore, the researchers recorded the dogs’ reactions. In the first trial, they observed that when the dogs found the baseline toy at the end of the search, only 2 dogs hesitated and 20 did not in fetching the toy. In contrast, significantly more dogs (8) (2) hesitated to fetch the surprise toy. Curiously, in subsequent trials fewer dogs showed hesitation in fetching both the baseline and surprise toys.

Brauer and Belger  (9) concluded, that, based on the hesitancy exhibited in the first trial, the dogs did indeed know what they were sniffing for. Furthermore, the findings suggest that dogs can individuate objects by (10) type; a capability once thought unique to humans and apes. The (11) dissidences in the later trials, the researchers explained, only underscore the flexibility of dogs’ searching behaviors: the dogs learned that they would get a treat regardless of whether they retrieved the correct toy. No further proof may be necessary to convince dog lovers of the complexity of their canine companions’ inner lives, but studies such as Brauer and Belger’s help expand the scientific understanding of how dogs experience the world.

(12) Shira Suveyke took a big risk in her career, and it ultimately paid off. As a retail merchandise buyer for online fashion retailer the Outnet, Suveyke can only do her best to predict which pieces of clothing will appeal to customers in order to decide which products will be sold on the company’s website. Suveyke must make key purchasing decisions that balance both market and aesthetic (13) considerations. To ensure that the right items are in stock when customers want them.

[1] In a global online marketplace, a merchandise buyer like Suveyke must carefully consider the varied preferences of a diverse customer base. [2] Consumer trends can vary not only from country to country but also from region to region within the same country. [3] Suveyke analyzes years of customer data to target purchasing decisions for each market. [4] Suveyke, who began her career in finance before moving into the fashion industry, contends that a successful buyer needs to be (14) savvy in both a fashion and a business sense. [5] Good buyers, she says, need analytical skills, (15) an eyeing for quality, and the confidence to act on instinct when products appeal to them. [6] These proficiencies are typically gained through a combination of formal educationmany retail buyers major in retail merchandising, business, or m (16) fashion, and practical experience such as internships or jobs in retail establishments. (17)

With much at stake for (18) companies, if their products don’t sell, merchandise buyers make purchasing decisions based on careful deliberation. A study published in 2014 in the Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services asked apparel merchandise buyers to rate (from 1 to 4) the factors they take into account when making purchases. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a product’s (19) brand image received the lowest average rating, at 3.39. Other factors that buyers gave the highest ratings illustrate the wide range of expertise that Suveyke and others in the field must bring to their work. For instance, understanding the target customer and (20) current fashion trends each received an average rating of 3.20. Buyers also rated sales history (3.28) and budget (3.19) very highly, illustrating that they must pay attention to market research and accounting concerns.

The results of the study certainly support Suveyke’s (21) assertions. Suveyke has asserted that the career of a merchandise buyer is one that (22) mixed creativity with business acumen all in a day’s work. Since fashion trends are always changing, merchandise buyers are guaranteed a dynamic and ever-evolving career even if they can’t predict the future.

It is widely believed that a Type la supernova occurs when a white dwarf star siphons mass from a companion star until the white dwarf becomes unstable and explodes. However, (23) the brightness of this type of supernova, at its peak, maybe equivalent to up to 10 billion times that of our Sun. One model posits that an ordinary star is the culprit, while a different proposed scenario suggests another white dwarf is the companion. (24) The two models are not mutually exclusive. Of the two models, recent research provides strong empirical support for the latter the double-degenerate model involving a pair of white dwarf stars.

[1] Proponents of the double-degenerate model (25) hypothesizes that in some cases the companion white dwarf (26) survives and is propelled away with a velocity equal to its orbital velocity prior to the explosion, but several surveys failed to identify any such so-called hypervelocity runaways. [2] In 2018, though, astronomer Ken Shen led an international team of researchers in a renewed search. [3] Shen argued that prior studies either lacked a wide enough search radius or failed to consider that the once hotter hypervelocity companion stars might have cooled since the (2) explosion, to make them harder to distinguish from other white dwarfs. (28)

Shen’s team used the European Space Agency’s Gaia spacecraft and (29) ground-based telescopes at sites across the globe to conduct an all-sky search for (30) stars that matched his description of hypervelocity runaways.

Three white dwarf stars appeared as likely candidates, one of which was traveling at 8.64 million kilometers per hour, making it among the fastest known objects in the galaxy. The researchers calculated the trajectories of these stars to determine their past locations and made a key (31) discovery 90,000 years ago: one of the stars was positioned in what are now the faint remains of a supernova, suggesting its history as a companion star in a Type la supernova event.

While these results provide support for the double degenerate model, (32) emerging technologies have the potential to provide a greater understanding of the Milky Way galaxy. When considering high-velocity outliers such as these, warns University of Texas at Austin astronomer Keith Hawkins, “you have to be very careful about whether or not there’s something wrong with the data.” Indeed, confirmation requires additional findings, but Shen believes evidence of many other hypervelocity runaway white dwarfs may be hidden in current astronomical data. (33) Shen had not been guaranteed to find any useful data at all and was encouraged by his team’s findings.

Scottish artist Katie Paterson creates conceptual art projects that invite viewers to consider their relationship to nature, (34) with a focus on the huge immensity of space and time. For her piece Inside this desert lies the tiniest grain of sand, she asked nanotechnology experts to fashion the world’s tiniest fragment of sand, which she then buried in the vast wastelands of the Sahara. Her Fossil Necklace is a necklace of 170 fossils, each symbolizing a different milestone in the development of life on Earth over billions of years. Paterson’s new work, Future Library, explores the links between the natural world, time, and human activity in an exciting new (35) way: the project involves planting a small forest and, one hundred years later, turning (36) them into a book.

For Paterson, Future Library began with her interest in the relationship between books and trees. As she explained in an interview, “The idea to grow trees to print books arose through making a connection between tree rings and chapters—almost as if the trees absorb the writer’s words like air or water, and the rings become chapters, spaced out over the years to come.” Paterson had long wanted to develop a (37) project exploring the connection between writing and the natural world, and when she was hired by a group from Oslo, Norway, to create public art for the area around the city’s harbor, she saw an opportunity to (38) travel abroad.

The project officially got underway in 2014 when Paterson and others planted 1,000 spruce trees in a forest north of Oslo. According to her plan, the trees are to be (39) handled for one hundred years. For each of those years, from 2014 to 2114, a noted author (40) is to be asked to contribute an original piece of writing; each work is to be held securely, unread, in storage in the new Oslo Public Library in the city’s harbor district. Thus, as the trees grow, so too does a collection of stories, poems, and essays. At the end of the hundred-year period, the trees are to be cut down and made into paper. (41) Because the anthology will be presented in the public library in Oslo, Paterson estimates that the trees should yield enough paper to print 3,000 copies of the full collection. Readers of the anthology will be able to (42) analyze the defining characteristics of good literature, one written work at a time.

The first writer to be asked to contribute to the anthology, Canadian author Margaret Atwood, submitted a piece titled “Scribbler Moon” in 2015.  (43) Reflecting on the (44) experience, so Atwood captured the beauty and mystery of Paterson’s project: “Will there be a ‘forest’? Will there be a library’? How strange it is to think of my own voice-silent by then for a long time suddenly being awakened, after 100 years.”