We describe our experience with designing and running a matching market for the Israeli "Mechinot" gap-year programs. The main conceptual challenge in the design of this market was the rich set of diversity considerations, which necessitated the development of an appropriate preference-specification language along with corresponding choice-function semantics, which we also theoretically analyze. Our contribution extends the existing toolbox for two-sided matching with soft constraints. This market was run for the first time in January 2018 and matched 1,607 candidates (out of a total of 3,120 candidates) to 35 different programs, has been run twice more since, and has been adopted by the Joint Council of the "Mechinot" gap-year programs for the foreseeable future.
Background music (BGM) is one of the factors that create the shop environment. In order to increase the shopper's purchase intention, it is necessary for us not only to rely on the already-existing BGM, but also to develop new sound sources and environment that would be more suitable for the shop. Currently, Japanese people are buzzing with a cat boom, and the cat's purr is believed to bring healing to people. However, there is no direct evidence to prove this hypothesis. In this study, we examined the effect of the cat's purr on the physiological condition of our bodies. When subjects listened to the cat's purr after doing a stress load task, their heart rates were significantly lower than those at the time of rest regardless of their preferences for cats. These results suggest the possibility that the cat purr sound may have a relaxing effect on our minds and bodies. The cat purr sound has a potential to be a new sound source for the shop.
