Park Rangers in the United States National Park Service (NPS) are often thought of as welcoming guides who sport crisp, khaki-and-green uniforms and broad brimmed hats and who issue permits to park visitors and lead nature walks. (1) But park rangers undergo extensive training. Some rangers collect data on wildlife; others engage in law enforcement efforts and rescue missions. One of their lesser-known but culturally important duties is to (2) ensure visitors' safety. By sharing the stories of national landmarks, park rangers contribute to shaping visitors' understanding of US history. (3) Betty Reid Soskin was introduced to the park system in 2000.

Soskin is a park ranger at Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front National Historical Park in Richmond, California. The park commemorates the role of workers during the (4) war. The park includes sites such as a Ford assembly plant, which now serves as the visitor center, and a memorial to Rosie the Riveter, a character who represents the contributions of women to industry during the Second World War. Soskin serves as an interpretive ranger, explaining the significance of the park's sites to visitors. Sometimes visitor can find her in the visitor (5) center; where she brings the past to life by adding live commentary after visitors watch a video that (6) described the work of local shipbuilders.

A clerk in a trade union office during the Second World War, Soskin regards herself as a primary resource on the history of the shipyards and factories in Richmond and, specifically, on the role and conditions of women and African Americans in those industries. It was a desire to share the stories of her experiences that brought Soskin to the NPS. While working for a California state assemblywoman, Soskin attended NPS planning meeting that eventually led to the park's creation. At those meetings, she found herself (7) to think, "What gets remembered is a function of who's in the room doing the remembering." Soskin initially joined the development efforts and (8) then later became a park ranger.

Her most popular presentation at thepark is called "Untold Stories and Lost Conversations," a bus tour which fills up two months in (9) advance recounting Soskin's personal Second World War story. According to Soskin, she's not a trained historian, her tour is popular because she shares her personal story as well as the story of other African American workers, a narrative that has often been overlooked in history books. Continuing to appreciate how (10) distinguished her career has been, Soskin also asks visitors to contribute to (11) one’s stories to the park's oral history collection.

Globally, the amount of discarded electronic (12) equipment, or e-waste—has increased from about tons in 2010 to approximately 46.1 million tons in 2014. (13) Old and obsolete devices are deposited in landfills. When these devices are in landfills, harmful substances can seep into the ground and water supply. However, if properly recycled, these products can become an ecofriendly source of manufacturing materials. As waste proliferates, both governments and manufacturers (14) need to plug away to ensure the effectiveness and practicality of recycling it.

Currently, an estimated 70 percent to 80 percent of e-waste is not recycled. Many governments are addressing this issue by implementing regulations based (15) off of the principal of extended producer responsibility (EPR) holding manufacturers accountable for the entire life cycle of products, including the final stages of collection, reuse, and safe disposal. In 2012, for example, the Chinese government moved from a non-EPR e-waste recycling policy, implemented in 2009, to an EPR-based system. A research team led by Professor Jian Cao of Zhejiang University of Technology studied the efficacy of the new system, which was improved significantly in 2014 using taxes levied on manufacturers to subsidize (16) it’s upgraded capacity and safety standards. Cao's team (17) found that the new system ultimately contributed to an increase in e-waste recycling from 2.96 million units in 2009 to 69.8 million units in 2014.

Cao's team also noted (18) the constantly evolving nature of the Chinese e-waste management system. Slimmer and lighter devices often have design features that stymie (19) recyclers' efforts to extract valuable materials like (20) copper; iron, and glass for reuse. On the other hand, easy-to-dismantle designs, such as that of the cell phones made by the Dutch company Fair phone, (21) indicate a genuine commitment to style-conscious consumer. David Thompson, head of environmental affairs for a large electronics company, suggests that the use of glues, as well as adopting an industry standard for screws and plastic resin materials, will improve recycling efforts by making products easier to disassemble and repurpose. To encourage manufacturers to make these changes, governments should employ tax breaks for companies that adopt designs conducive to recycling, Cao's team concluded.

As people around the world regularly upgrade their electronic equipment, the amount of e-waste will continue to increase, posing wide-ranging ecological and health challenges. If governments and companies work proactively, and in some cases collaboratively, these dangers can be forestalled, though the safety of (22) workers tasked with dismantling electronics must also be guaranteed.

[1] Because of the high costs of buying and conserving artwork, museums typically have their collections insured. [2] However, if an insured artwork is to the point where restoring it would cost more (23) then its market value, that piece is called a total loss and becomes legally worthless. [3] The insurer pays the museum the market value of the artwork and thereby (24) takes ownership of the work. [4] Such pieces then often sit in warehouses, never to be displayed again. [5]

Seeing a different kind of value in these works that no longer have monetary value, (25) damaged art was given new life by Elka Krajewska when she began the Salvage Art Institue (SAI). [6] She says her goal in maintaining the collection is to bring total-loss works out of seclusion and spark conversations about them. (26) The SAI acts as a haven for damaged works and allows them to be viewed by the public as a different kind of art. In 2012, one insurance company donated about fifty total loss pieces to the institute, and since then, the SAI has added a few (27) pieces and displayed the collection in an exhibit called No Longer Art in several cities in the United States and abroad. Some pieces are visibly destroyed, like a 1995 sculpture by Jeff Koons that was broken into several pieces, while others are not — (28) one 1997 painting by Ed Ruscha was deemed a total loss because someone spilled a few drops of a beverage onto the canvas.

The SAI also provides patrons opportunities to examine art in ways not possible in traditional museums. While most exhibits have tight security to prevent people from getting too close to valuable (29) art, yet No Longer Art invites visitors to touch the already-damaged objects. One work in the collection, Piazza d'Italia, painted by Italian artist Giorgio de Chirico between 1909 and 1919, was ripped in half by a wrecking ball that broke through a wall during building renovations. (30) The artist had created a series of paintings of the piazza, many of which now line the walls of other museums and are considered to be significant works in the Western canon. The SAI, though, encourages people to come face-to-face (and hand to canvas) with this well-known painting and examine it closely.

(31) Thanks to the generosity of an insurance company, the SAI offers a unique setting in which visitors may think about what (32) molds art and consider the process whereby art is assigned value. Krajewska (33) says what she finds most interesting is, "how, even when damage is minor and easily restorable, something can be art one moment but not the next." At the SAI, viewers can contemplate this seemingly arbitrary line between art and non-art.

Until recently, scientists thought that because birds' brains lack a prefrontal cortex (PFC)-the part of the brain associated with complex cognition in mammals-birds were unable to perform advanced cognitive tasks. (34) Recent research has confirmed that the brains of birds have distinctive structures. Studies show that corvids (a family of birds that includes ravens, crows, and jays) are capable of performing tasks previously thought to require a PFC.

Scientists now realize that some corvids possess cognitive capabilities rivaling those of advanced mammals. In one study, researchers found (35) that many birds are able to use simple tools such as twigs to search for food, the New Caledonian crow, a corvid species, crafts sophisticated hook-shaped tools to root for insect larvae in trees. Other (36) studies, on the contrary, have indicated that corvids (37) grasp the concepts of object permanence (knowing that an object still exists even if it is hidden), impulse control (being able to delay gratification), and mental time travel (planning ahead and remembering the past).

These findings led two researchers, Onur Giinyiirkiin and Thomas Bugnyar, to hypothesize that some corvids have a brain structure that functions much like the PFC. After analyzing numerous studies of bird's brain (38) structures, Giinyiirkiin and Bugnyar concluded that the nidopallium, a region of the pallium (the layer of matter covering the upper surface of the cerebrum), is integral in synthesizing information from the senses and sharing (39) them with motor structures.

A study by Nathan J. Emery and Nicola S. Clayton shows the relative prominence of the nidopallium in corvids. Comparing the relative size ratios of different regions of the pallium (hyperpallium, mesopallium, and nidopallium) to the brain stem in various bird species, these researchers found that the relative size ratio of nidopallium to brain stem (40) in European jays is approximately 7.5:1. By comparison, the relative size ratios of (41) hyperpallium to brain stem in house sparrows and carrion crows are approximately 3.75:1 and 1.8:1, respectively. If the nidopallium (42) truly is in actually the source of cognition in birds, then the relatively large ratio of nidopallium to brain stem in corvids helps explain why (43) is their cognitive ability higher than that of other bird species.

Though many questions about the evolution of corvid's cognitive abilities remain, the two research teams consider it likely that the birds' intellectual prowess evolved because corvids faced selective pressures similar to (44) mammals. The researchers are hopeful that their findings will spur further investigations of the evolutionary relationship between cognitive abilities and the physical structure of the brain.