Deep in the sun’s core, two protons of hydrogen atoms collide violently. Under 【C1】_____pressure they fuse together and release vast amounts of energy in a process known as nuclear fusion. Travelling at the speed of light, some of this solar energy【C2】__Earth, where it powers our planet. From kettles to cars, almost all of the energy that we rely on originates from the sun. To【C3】__our increasingly electrified lives, there is an abundance of clean and renewable energy sources that we can【C4】__. And technology is at the cutting edge of harnessing this renewable energy more【C5】_____.

Solar panels are one of the most ubiquitous renewable energies, already【C6】_____more than 3.5 percent of the world’s electricity. But there is【C7】__for improvement: Capturing just one hour of the world’s sunlight would power the planet for a year. Not only are more solar panels being【C8】__, but technology is also finding ways to make them more efficient. Placing hexagonal lenses into a panel’s protective glass coating, for example, can【C9】__the incoming light to achieve an efficiency rate of about 30 percent, compared to an industry standard of 15-22 percent. Adding thin【C10】_____of silicon to both sides of a solar cell increases its efficiency to around 25 percent.

However, with silicon, one of the most energy intensive【C11】_____of traditional solar panels, science has developed an alternative using perovskite crystals. Another big【C12】_____ has been PERC (Passivated Emitter Rear Cell) technology, that【C13】_____unabsorbed light back into the solar cell for a second chance at conversion into electricity.【C14】__, PERC enables solar panels to be bifacial—capturing sunlight on both sides with sun-tracking technology moving the panel to ensure【C15】_____exposure.

Among the most recognizable forms of renewable energy is wind power, with wind turbines an【C16】_____common feature of both landscapes and coastlines. Wind already generates more than six percent of global electricity, and technologies are being developed that will make wind turbines cheaper, more efficient, and more【C17】__. A key focus has been on the blades that catch the wind’s kinetic【C18】__, with technological improvements, 【C19】__3D printing, enabling blades to be【C20】_____longer and lighter for greater efficiency.

Eton college can boast of educating more than a third of Britain’s 57 prime ministers over its 583 years. Less impressive is the fact that the number of its pupils winning places at the universities of Oxford or Cambridge fell by more than half between 2014 and the 2021-2022 school year. Some parents pick private schools in the hope that their kids will benefit from more attention or less bullying. Others bet that these institutions will lead to a better education, higher grades and a place at a venerable university. But soaring costs and changing university admissions policies are prompting discussion of whether private schools are worth it.

Recent evidence suggests that for most privately schooled children in Britain and those who attend elite private institutions in America, the advantages of an expensive education remain robust. Costs in Britain are among the highest in the world. Fees in America are lower on average, but also rocketed by 60％ in the first decade of this century. Measuring what benefits flow from these expenses matters both to critics of private schooling and to those who pay for it. At first glance, the pay-offs are clear: all around the rich world privately educated pupils do better in exams, go to better universities and end up with better-paid jobs. But some of that success derives from advantages outside the classroom, such as having wealthy, encouraging or intelligent parents.

Picking apart the benefits of private education in America is difficult, because that is more complicated than Britain’s. America’s elite universities welcome those from private high schools with open arms. Money helps, too. Whereas English universities charge every domestic student the same tuition fees, America’s best universities vary the cost according tomeans. This allows exceptional pupils from poor backgrounds to study for little or nothing. But it also gives universities good reason to keep in with dependable “feeder” schools, full of clever pupils with ample wealth.

America may be on the verge of change, however. Imminent rulings from its Supreme Court could ban the use of affirmative action in university admissions. And if colleges and universities can no longer boost applicants from underrepresented minority groups, the advantages enjoyed by posh pupils may receive greater scrutiny. Private schools in Britain face a bumpy ride, too. The Labour Party, which looks likely to win power at elections due in the next 18 months, talks of abolishing private schools’ charitable status and stripping them of tax breaks. That could cause tuition fees to jump. Meanwhile, the paths to Oxford and Cambridge will keep narrowing. Expect a growing gang of Brits to head across the Atlantic.

Many have mused on how ChatGPT could change the world, not least schools. The college essay has been pronounced dead. ChatGPT is causing an educational “crisis”, claims Inside Higher Ed. Maybe so; but ChatGPT could also be a teacher’s friend.

It is easier to see the threat. Users can ask ChatGPT to create a rap about Milton Friedman, and it delivers lines like: “He was an economist with a unique vision/Spittin’ truth about free markets with precision”. This sophistication and creativity worries lots of teachers and schools.

An assistant professor at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut argues that AI can push them to become better. For example, before ChatGPT came along, an economics teacher might ask pupils to write an essay describing Keynesianism. With ChatGPT as an option, the teacher might ask the students to assess and revise the chatbot’s response to the same question—a more difficult task. AIs have other practical uses for teachers. They can help write lesson plans and worksheets at different reading levels and even in different languages. They can also cut down the time spent on duties, such as writing recommendation letters, that devour time that could be spent teaching.

Some organizations are going even further. Khan Academy, an education non-profit, recently launched a pilot of Khanmigo, its virtual guide that uses GPT-4, the latest upgrade of ChatGPT, to support pupils and teachers. If pupils gets a wrong answer to a maths problem, the chatbot helps them solve it on their own. In science, the program evaluates open-ended questions. In English class, it asks pupils questions about their essays. And in history, a pupil can debate with the bot to prepare for an in-class discussion. It even allows pupils to “talk” to historical figures or literary characters via simulations. The program provides teachers with a report on their pupils’ activities. It can help teachers create lessons and test pupils’ knowledge afterwards.

For those in charge of school and college administrations, the benefits are clearer. David Harris, president of Union College, a liberal-arts college in New York state, showed examples that ChatGPT done—a letter to students about changing the campus mascot, an Instagram post for campus photos on spring break, a final warning for an employee with chronic lateness.

Dr Harris is excited about what all this could mean for college costs. Many universities will charge about $80,000 a year next year for tuition, room and board. In 2021 the median household income in America was $71,000. College administration in America has become bloated. AI could eliminate the need for some of these jobs, and maybe enable colleges to pass savings on to students. ChatGPT may have killed the college essay, but with all its potential in and out of the classroom, perhaps that is OK.

Recent surveys show that managers tend to consider restrictions and a lack of resources as the main obstacles to innovation. This common wisdom suggestseradicatingall constraints: by getting rid of rules and boundaries, creativity, and innovative thinking will thrive. One research, however, challenges this wisdom and reveals that managers can innovate better by embracing constraints.

When there are no constraints on the creative process, self-satisfaction sets in, and people follow what psychologists call the path-of-least-resistance—they go for the most intuitive idea that comes to mind rather than investing in the development of better ideas. Constraints, in contrast, provide focus and a creative challenge that motivates people to search for and connect information from different sources to generate novel ideas for new products, services, or business processes.

Therefore, managers can embrace and use a variety of constraints. These constraints take three main forms. First, they can limit inputs (e.g. time, human capital and funds). Second, they can enforce specific processes. Examples include procedures on seeking early market and technological feedback, or guidelines on how small cross-functional work teams should interact. Third, they can set specific output requirements such as product or service specifications.

But managers also need to be mindful about imposing too many constraints. When a creative task is too constraining, employees’ motivation is hampered. If the space within which creative ideas are generated becomes too narrow, it is harder to form novel connections and insights—both of which are vital for creativity. Hence, the key for fostering creativity and innovation in your organization is to strike a balance by orchestrating different types of constraints.

Not all constraints are under managerial control. Here, it is important to realize that the same constraint may be interpreted in different ways: as a motivating challenge or as a frustrating roadblock. This is where managers may mobilize their leadership abilities and influence how employees interpret constraints through communication and feedback. By framing constraints as creative challenges, managers can build an understanding of constraints as positives, and thus invite more creativity.

Such framing of constraints is particularly important because not all employees naturally embrace constraints. Some need to be convinced that constraints help by providing focus and direction. One way to do this is by setting “flexible constraints”: some non-essential constraints may be included as a ’nice-to-have’ rather than a ’must-have.’ Such flexible limitations provide a challenge for those employees who are up to it while also still engaging those who might shy away from the increased difficulty.

Managers should also create a strong innovation climate. Such a climate is not only instrumental for innovation in and of itself but also for enabling people to navigate creatively under stricter constraints.

America’s main financial regulator is taking an interest in climate change—and wants everyone to know. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has created a task-force to examine environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues, appointed a climate consultant and said it will “enhance its focus” on climate-related disclosures for listed firms. It looks prepared to introduce rules forcing firms to reveal how climate change or efforts to fight it may affect their business.

The rulemaking stems from a concern that climate change poses a threat to financial stability. Whether this is true or not is hard to say. The data are dishonest and climate-risk reporting is largely voluntary. Firms tend to cherry-pick the most flattering numbers and methodologies. The reporting seldom reveals anything about a firm’s risk in the future— which is where the financial threats from climate change mostly reside.

Many watchdogs are pinning their hopes on the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), a global group of regulators. The TCFD has recommended a reporting standard made up of 11 broad categories, from carbon footprints to climate-risk management. Regulators like it because it focuses on material risks rather than environmental impacts, and because it asks for information about firms’ future plans. That includes “scenario analysis”, in which a company’s strategy is tested against potential futures, such as a hotter world or higher carbon prices.

These qualities also appeal to financiers. Financial firms make up almost half of the 1,800 or so companies that back the TCFD’s recommendations. Their clients and regulators are encouraging them to adopt the standard, so the financial firms in turn are motivating companies to do so, too, causing a rise in its use.

Not all companies are happy about this. It means compliance with one more ESG measure, and a tricky one at that. Many bosses claim their firms lack the expertise to do climate-based scenario analysis. Another problem is that disclosures may scare off investors. That is the evidence from France, which made climate-risk disclosures obligatory for asset managers, insurers and pension funds in 2016. A study by its central bank compared those firms with French banks and non-French financial firms. It found that the firms which had to disclose climate risks held 40％ fewer bonds, stocks and other securities in fossil-fuel firms by value than those that did not have to disclose risks.

Such a shift may drive up capital costs for polluting projects and lead to fewer emissions. But more climate disclosure will not by itself cut carbon, notes Remco Fischer of the UN Environment Programme. Regulatory climate risk can, in theory, be alleviated by moving carbon-heavy assets somewhere with more lenient environmental rules. And sophisticated risk assessments do not always result in decarbonisation.

Can Science Survive the Death of the Universe?

Humanity has gotten wealthier, healthier, freer, more peaceful and smarter. We know more than our ancestors did, and we’re learning more all the time. These trends, any reasonable person must acknowledge, constitute progress. The question is, how long can the quest for knowledge continue?

If you are speculating about our long-term cosmic future, you must confront the second law of thermodynamics, science’s most depressing insight into nature. It claims that closed systems, which don’t get infusions of energy from an outside source, tend over time to become more disordered.

The second law implies that the universe will inevitably lapse into heat death, in which everything, everywhere, is exactly the same temperature, near absolute zero, and nothing ever happens. John Horgan, the author of the End of Science, argues that particle physics, cosmology, neuroscience and other fields are bumping into fundamental limits.

The discovery in the late 1990s that the universe is expanding at an accelerating rate implies that we are approaching heat death, also known as the big chill, at an increasing rate. As the universe keeps ballooning, stars, including our own sun, and even black holes will eventually radiate away all their energy, and the universe will go dark, forever. Cosmologists have calculated that we will reach this cosmic dead end—in which time itself ceases, as physics writer George Musser points out—in one googol years. A googol is 10100.

Disturbed by the prospect of cosmic extinction, scientists have imagined ways in which we can avoid it. A pioneer in such speculation was Freeman Dyson. In a 1979 paper, “Time without end: Physics and biology in an open universe,” Dyson asserts that the universe has a point, a purpose, as long as it harbors intelligence. Eons from now, he suggests, our descendants may occupy other star systems and galaxies, perhaps after shedding their flesh-and-blood bodies and becoming clouds of sentient gas. Dyson presents mathematical arguments that these beings can, through shrewd conservation of energy, maintain the resources needed to survive, contemplate and communicate in an eternally expanding cosmos.

Roger Penrose, who won a Nobel Prize last year, has carried on Dyson’s project of imagining our cosmic future. Penrose invented a new model of the universe, conformal cyclic cosmology. The theory holds that our increasingly vacuous cosmos will eventually produce a singularity, a rupture in spacetime similar to the big bang. In this way, an expanding universe can generate new universes, one after the other.

According to Penrose, each new universe can pass on its accumulated information to the next in the form of the cosmic microwave radiation left over from its big bang. That means the knowledge we accumulate may be passed on to inhabitants of future universes.

David Deutsch opens his 2011 book The Beginning of Infinity by asking: “Must progress come to an end—either in catastrophe or in some sort of completion—or is it unbounded?” Deutsch’s book is one long argument for unboundedness.

He suggests that “knowledge-creation” can “continue forever.” Deutsch dislikes all human futures concerned with finality. He once said, “the world will never be perfected, even when everything we think of as problematic today has been eliminated. We shall always be at the beginning of infinity. Never satisfied.”

The prophesies of Dyson, Penrose and Deutsch contradict the claim that science is finite. But they share convictions, too, namely that human will never entirely solve the riddle of reality, and that knowledge-seeking, more than any other endeavor, makes human existence meaningful.

[A] points out that time stands still when the end of the universe comes.

[B] believes that knowledge-creation is endless and the future of mankind is infinite.

[C] says that the body of human descendants will be made up of clouds of sentient gas.

[D] argues that the exploration of some scientific subjects will reach their fundamental limits.

[E] assumes that the universe is infinite and that human knowledge will be passed on to future inhabitants.

[F] remarks that closed systems tend over time to become more disordered.

[G] holds that the universe has a point when it possesses human intelligence.