Have you ever been troubled by the question of whether to buy a wine with a cork  or a screw top? In fact, the way to seal wines is also a tough problem for the wineries. 

       The root of the problem lies in “cork taint.” When some wine is sealed with a bad cork, there will be cork taint. Corks are made from a special oak tree growing around the Mediterranean. In the process of making corks and sealing wine bottles, a certain type of mold may start to grow in some corks. Over time, this mold may make the wine taste musty. Since cork taint affects one out of every ten bottles of wine, no packaging industry in the world would put up with such a high rate of failure. 

       Some wine makers try to solve the problem by sealing bottles with screw tops. However, many wineries are still playing it safe and sticking to corks for two reasons. First, cork users believe a small amount of oxygen is able to penetrate corks, not screw tops, and the oxygen is necessary for the proper aging of fine wines. The other problem arises from the image screw tops have with the public. In most people’s minds, screw tops are only found on cheap, low-quality wines. In addition, there is the problem of losing the romantic mood produced by the popping of the cork. 

       For the reasons above, it will take a lot of efforts for wineries to re-educate the public if they want to change the habit of the public.

    By about age 12, students who feel threatened by mathematics start to avoid math courses, do poorly in thefew math classes they do take, and earn low scores on math-achievement tests. Some scientists have theorized thatkids having little math aptitude in the first place justifiably dread grappling with numbers. However, it is not thatsimple, at least for college students, according to a study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology. According tothe study, people’s intrusive worries about math temporarily disrupt mental processes needed for doing arithmeticand drag down math competence, report Mark H. Ashcraft and Elizabeth P. Kirk, both psychologists at Cleveland(Ohio) State University. Math anxiety exerts this effect by making it difficult to hold new information in mindwhile simultaneously manipulating it, the researchers hold. Psychologists regard this capacity, known as workingmemory, as crucial for dealing with numbers. “Math anxiety soaks up working memory resources and makes itharder to learn mathematics, probably beginning in middle school,” Ashcraft says.

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Plastic wasn’t invented until the late 19th century, and production only took off around 1950. But today we have 9.2 billion tons of the stuff to deal with. Of that, more than 6.9 billion tons have become waste. It is unclear how long it will take for the plastic to completely biodegrade into constituent molecules. Estimates range from 450 years to never. Meanwhile, ocean plastic is estimated to kill millions of marine animals every year. Nearly 700 species have been affected. Some are harmed visibly—strangled by abandoned fishing nets or discarded six-pack rings. Many more are harmed invisibly. They eat microplastics, the bits smaller than one-fifth of an inch across. Since World War II, plastics have transformed our lives, mostly for the better. They have eased travel into space and revolutionized medicine. They lighten cars and jumbo jets, saving fuel and pollution. They extend the life of fresh food and save lives daily by delivering cleaning drinking water to needy areas. Now the growth of plastic production has far outstripped the ability of waste management, and the oceans are under assault. Governments and corporations have been making efforts to address the waste problem. Kenya, for example, joined a growing list of nations that have banned plastic bags, imposing steep fines and jail time on violators. Coca-cola announced a goal to recycle 100 percent of its packaging by 2030. These help at some level, but the real solution is to stop plastic from entering the ocean. There are two fundamental ways industry can help. First, it can design new plastics that are either biodegradable or more recyclable. The second way is to just collect the trash. More effective and efficient garbage collection systems are necessary. We need garbage trucks to collect the waste on a regular basis so that it does not end up going all over the planet.