Connor Balthazor, 17, was in the middle of study hall when he was called into a meeting with his high school newspaper adviser. A group of reporters and editors from the student newspaper, the Booster Redux at Pittsburg High School in southeastern Kansas, had gathered to talk about Amy Robertson, who was recently hired as the high school’s head principal. 

  The student journalists had begun researching Robertson, and quickly found some discrepancies in her education credentials. For one, when they researched Corllins University, the private university where Robertson said she got her master’s and doctorate degrees years ago, the website didn’t work. They found no evidence that it was an accredited university. “There were some things that just didn’t quite add up,” Balthazor told The Washington Post. The students began digging into a weeks-long investigation that would result in an article published questioning the legitimacy of the principal’s degrees and of her work as an education consultant. A few days after the release of the report, Robertson resigned. 

  “In light of the issues that arose, Dr. Robertson felt it was in the best interest of the district to resign her position,” Pittsburg Community Schools announced in a statement. The resignation thrust the student newspaper staff into local, state, and national news, with professional journalists nationwide applauding the students for asking tough questions and prompting change in their administration. “Everybody kept telling them, ‘stop poking your nose where it doesn’t belong,'” newspaper adviser Emily Smith told The Post. But with the encouragement of the superintendent, the students persisted. “They were at a loss that something that was so easy for them to see was waiting to be noticed by adults,” Smith said. “We’d broken out of our comfort zones so much,” Balthazor said. “To know that the administration saw that and respected that, it was a really great moment for us.”           After graduation, Balthazor said, he hopes to pursue a degree in creative writing or filmmaking. Even though he doesn’t necessarily plan to stick with journalism, Balthazor said the past few weeks had been “surreal.” “Most high schoolers would never get even close to an opportunity to get to experience something like this,” he said.

 A. The phenomenon of cultural transmission can be observed in not only human beings but also animals. The executive chef shows his/her apprentice how to make a tender chicken dish. Likely, in the world of animals, sparrows learn how to do vocal dialects from older sparrows. Through the process of socialization, young or more incapable members of the group gradually pick up the common knowledge, skills, and information. However, the process of cultural transmission can be largely affected by external factors, such as the physical environment, that may lead an individual to interpret a traditional concept in a novel way. The environmental stimuli that contribute to this variance can include climate, migration patterns, conflict, suitability for survival, and endemic pathogens. Although differences exist, cultural transmission is an important way for “a new comer” to gain the membership into a social group. 

A recent study published in the journal Science finds that cultural transmission is behind the spread of a hunting technique among humpback whales off New England. Lobtail feeding is the focus of the study. The researchers first saw lobtail feeding in 1980. Within 30 years, 37 percent of the observed humpbacks had learned to hunt fish by slapping the surface of the water with its tail. The whales will gobble up the fish that the resulting bubbles pen in. With 27 years of data from whale-watching boats in the Guld of Maine, the researchers have created mathematical models to examine the spread of lobtail feeding. The results show that humpback whales that spend more time with lobtail feeders were more likely to pick up the method themselves. Clearly, whales are capable of sophisticated social interactions—and we've only seen the tip of the tail.

  The European lead is striking. According to recent statistics, Americans have an average of just two weeks off each year. In Europe, by contrast, at least a month of paid vacation is viewed as an inalienable right. The Italians get 42 days of holiday a year; the French, 37 and the Germans, 35.            Even the British, with their more American business culture, still take an average of 28 days off a year. In August, the height of the holiday season, much of Europe simply closes down. There is simply no point in trying to get anyone to do any work. Taking a long summer holiday is so crucial to European self-esteem that a survey showed that more than a third of Italians who stay at home during the extended time off intended to pretend that they were going away. Considerable numbers were prepared to buy tanning machines and to take the pets to the neighbors to maintain appearances.          Naturally, people’s inclination for taking longer holidays represents a mammoth business opportunity for the tourism and travel industry, by some measures, the world’s largest industry. Figures from the World Tourism Organization suggest that most international tourists travel to or within Europe, giving Europe a 58% share of the world tourism market. Of the top eight destinations, five are in Europe; France tops the list, followed by Spain, the United States and Italy. 

   These figures, however, may mislead. Some 80% of vacationers within the European Union are from other parts of the EU. France’s top place owes much to the country’s inherent attractions but also quite a lot to its geographical position. Every Dutch or Belgian caravan thundering through France towards the beaches of Spain adds to the figure of foreign visitors to France.

    Still, there is no doubt about the economic weight of tourism in Europe. Indeed, any sign that the flow of tourists is slowing is greeted with neurotic headlines. Yet while Europe cannot live without tourists, it sometimes finds it hard to live with them. The city authorities in Venice are so fed up with some visitors’ behavior that they have just announced a list of 10 offences for which they will impose on-the-spot fines. Improprieties including walking around bare-chested and bathing in fountains, even in the torrid summer, are on the list. Spaniards and Greeks find the hordes of riotous, boozy young Britons that descend on them each summer a mixed blessing. 

   Such excesses of mass tourism will certainly do nothing to puncture Europe’s love affair with the long holiday. Those unfortunate souls charged with managing the European economy are having to factor holidays into their thinking. Analysis has shown that a large part of the wealth gap per head between Europeans and Americans could be attributed to Europeans’ preference for taking longer holidays. The figures certainly show that when they are actually in their offices, the Germans, French and Dutch (though not the British) are more productive than Americans. 

   But not everyone is as sanguine about this state of affairs. Hopeful talk by some European politicians of building up the European Union as a new superpower is likely to prove vain so long as the EU’s economic growth lags so markedly behind that of the United States—not to mention China’s. Germany’s labor minister recently caused a stir by arguing that Germans ought to work more and take less holidays. Some of his countrymen may even be taking these strictures to heart. 

   Germans traditionally take more foreign holidays per head than all other Europeans, but this year, German travel agents say that bookings are substantially down. Some attribute this to a new mood of economic insecurity. Perhaps there is a selfcorrecting mechanism in Europeans’ taste for leisure over work. If the measures were taken too far, might the economy slow down so much that people no longer feel secure or rich enough to take the usual five weeks off?