Washington D.C. serves as the capital of the United States. The name, District of Columbia honors Christopher Columbus, and the city’s better-known name of Washington, honors the first president. However, it once again ranked first in terms of dangerous driving. The probability of a traffic accident in Washington residents is 109.3% higher than the national average.

As a result, Washington D.C. is working to identify drivers with a history of breaking traffic rules, such as speeding and illegal parking, to send pointed message to warn them seriously of their risks of getting into a deadly crash.

City officials say they hope the pointed messages will deter dangerous road behaviors. “ Some drivers are putting others at serious risk with speeding and red-light running and we hope that this creative approach can gradually reduce serious injury and crashes.” said Jeff Melley, director of the city’s Department of Transportation.

Researchers have studied the relationship between repeated traffic offenders and serious crashes, with some data suggesting a strong connection between the two. That means, drivers with multiple dangerous road behaviors are more likely to be involved in crashes. A team from The Lab led by researchers from the MIT will create a campaign. “We will evaluate whether high-risk drivers who receive these messages have fewer dangerous road behaviors, compared to the group of high-risk drivers who do not receive the messages.”

City officials said the purpose of these pointed messages is to educate the high-risk drivers. Jeff said, “there is no punishment or fine attached to the message and the campaign is to use data to directly communicate with individual drivers.” So some questioned whether the message will work. Anyway, efficient measures begin with creative tryouts.

Pew Research Center is an organization that aims to inform the public about the issues, beliefs and trends shaping the world. It recently asked people in 24 countries a series of questions about how connected they feel to their own communities and countries as well as to people around the world. Pew researchers looked at, among other things, how international travel experience relates to feelings of connectedness.

The study found about half of all respondents reported they feel at least somewhat close to people all over the world. Feeling close to others around the world is more common in Europe than in most other places. In the USA, only 35 percent of the respondents said they feel at least somewhat connected to those in other countries. The percentage was even lower in Argentina (28 percent) and Indonesia (22 percent).

But international travel does not always mean a person feels a closeness to people around the world. Bright, a retired American schoolteacher, is one such exception. Pew researchers found a similar case in Sweden. Ninety-nine percent of Swedish respondents said they had visited at least one other country. Yet a much smaller share of Swedish respondents—47 percent—report feeling close to people all over the world.

However, Pew’s findings also show that international connectedness can be formed in ways other than traveling overseas. Sadikova, a Uzbek English teacher, feels connected to people all over the world even though she has never traveled outside Uzbekistan. She said, “Some years ago it was difficult for us to get information about people in the world, but currently, because of media, it is quite easy to get familiar with events and news.”

A simple gesture can be formed into a child’s memory so quickly that it will cause the child to give a false answer to a question accompanied by that gesture. A new finding suggests that parents, social workers, psychologists and lawyers should be careful with their hands as well as their words.

While memories of both adults and children are easy to react to suggestion, those of children are known to be particularly influenced, said lead researcher Sara Broaders of Northwestern University. Kids are used to looking to adults to tell events for them and can be misled even if not intentionally.

Previous research, for example,   has shown that detail-loaded questions often cause false answers; when asked, say “Did you drink juice at the picnic?” the child is likely to say “yes” even if no juice had been available. It is not that the child is consciously lying, but rather the detail is quickly formed into his or her memory.

To avoid this problem, social workers have long been advised to ask children only open- ended questions,   such as “What did you have at the picnic?” But an open-ended question paired with a gesture, briefly meaning a juice box, is treated like a detailed question. That is，children become likely to answer falsely.

And it isn’t just a few kids: 77% of children gave at least one piece of false information when a detail was suggested by an ordinary gesture. Gestures may also become more popular when talking with non-fluent language users, such as little kids, Broaders said as hand movements can impart meaning of unfamiliar words and phrases. “It certainly seems reasonable that adults would gesture more with children. ’’

In general, Broaders advises parents and other adults to “try to be aware of your hands when questioning a child about an event. Otherwise, you might be getting answers that don’t reflect what actually happened. ’’