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In a sequence of bestsellers, including The Language Instinct and How the Mind Works, Pinker has argued the swathes of our mental, social and emotional lives may have originatedas evolutionary adaptations, well suited to the lives our ancestors eked out on the Pleistocene savannah. Sometimes it seems as if nothing is immunefrom being explained this way. Road rage, adultery, marriage, altruism, our tendency to reward senior executives with corner offices on the top floor, and the smaller number of women who become mechanical engineers—all may have their rootsin natural selection, Pinker claims. The controversial implications are obvious: that men and women might differin their inborn abilities at performing certain tasks, for example, or that parenting may have littleinfluence on personality.

Never has the carbon footprint of multi-national corporations been under such intense scrutiny. Inter-city train journeys and long-haul flights to conductface-to-face business meetings contribute significantly to greenhouse gases and the resulting strainon the environment. The Anglo-US company Teliris has introduced a new video-conferencing technology and partnered with the Carbon Neutral Company, enabling corporate outfits to become more environmentally responsible. The innovation allows simulated face-to-face meetings to be held across continents without the time pressureor environmental burden of international travel. Previous designs have enabled video-conferencing on a point-to-point, dual-location basis. The firm's VirtuaLive technology, however, can bring people together from up to five separatelocations anywhere in the world - with unrivalledtransmission quality.

Financing of Australian higher education has undergone dramatic change since the early 1970s. Although the Australian Government provided regular funding for universities from the late 1950s, in 1974 it assumedfull responsibility for funding higher education – abolishingtuition fees with the intention of making university accessibleto all Australians who had the abilityand who wished to participate in higher education. Since the late 1980s, there has been a move towards greater private contributions, particularlystudent fees. In 1989, the Australian Government introduced the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS) which included a loans scheme to help students finance their contributions. This enabled university to remain accessible to students by delaying their payments until they could afford to pay off their loans. In 2002, the Australian Government introduceda scheme similar to HECS for postgraduate students - the Postgraduate Education Loan Scheme (PELS). Funding for higher education comes from various sources. This article examines the three main sources - Australian Government funding, student fees and charges, and HECS. While the proportion of total revenueraised through HECS is relatively small, HECS payments are a significant component of students' university costs, with many students carrying a HECS debt for several years after leaving university. This article also focuses on characteristics of university students based on their HECS liability status, and the level of accumulated HECS debt.

Sound depressing, even apocalyptic? Well, it could be the future. If government forecastsare right, about 20 years from now, two out of five households will be single occupancy.And there is evidence the situation is already deteriorating.According to a report, Social Isolation in America, published in the American Sociological Review in 2006, the average American today has only two close friends. Twenty-five per cent of those surveyed said they do not have anyone to talk with about important things---And yet, while some are declaringa crisis in our ability to make friends, others are saying exactly the opposite. For example, MSN's Anatomy of Friendship Report, published last November, suggests that the average Briton has 54 friends - a spectacularrise of 64 per cent since 2003.

Thomas Alva Edison was botha scientist and an inventor. Born in 1847, Edison would see tremendouschange take place in his lifetime. He was also to be responsible for making many of those changes occur. When Edison was born, society still thoughtof electricity as a novelty,a fad. By the time he died, entire cities were lit by electricity. Much of the creditfor that progress goes to Edison. In his lifetime, Edison patented1,093 inventions, earning him the nickname “The Wizard of Menlo Park.” The most famous of his inventions was the incandescent light bulb. Besides the light bulb, Edison developedthe phonograph and the “kinetoscope,” a small box for viewing moving films. Thomas Edison is also the first person in the US to make his own filmstrips. He also improvedupon the original design of the stock ticker, the telegraph, and Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone. He believed in hard work, sometimes working twenty hours a day. Edison was quoted as saying, “Genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.” In tributeto this important American, electric lights in the United States were dimmedfor one minute on October 21, 1931, a few days after his death.

Impressionism was a nineteenth century art movement that began as a loose association of Paris-based artists who started publicly exhibiting their art in the 1860s. Characteristics of Impressionist painting include visible brush strokes, light colours, open composition, emphasison light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage of time), ordinary subject matter, and unusual visual angles. The name of the movement is derivedfrom Claude Monet's Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant). Critic Louis Leroy inadvertently coined the term in a satiric review published in Le Charivari. Radicals in their time, early Impressionists broke the rules of academic painting. They began by giving colours, freely brushed, primacy over line, drawing inspirationfrom the work of painters such as Eugene Delacroix. They also took the actof painting out of the studio and into the world. Previously, not only still-lives and portraits, but also landscapes had been painted indoors, but the Impressionists found that they could capturethe momentary and transient effects of sunlight by painting air (in plain air).

All approaches aim to increase blood flow to areas of tension and to release painful knots ofmuscle known as "trigger points". "Trigger points are tense areas of muscle that are almost constantly contracting," says Kippen. "The contraction causes pain, which in turn causes contraction, so you have a vicious circle. This is what deep tissue massage aims to break. "The way to do this, as I found out under Ogedengbe's elbow, is to apply pressure tothe point, stopping the blood flow, and then to release, which causes the brain to flood the affected area withblood, encouraging the muscle to relax. At the same time, says Kippen, you can fool the tensed muscle into relaxing byapplying pressure to a complementary one nearby. "If you cause any muscle to contract, its opposite will expand. So you try to trick the body intorelaxing the muscle that is in spasm."

Measuring poverty on a global scale requiresestablishing a uniform poverty level across extremely divergent economies, which can result in only rough comparisons. The World Bank has defined the international poverty line as U.S. $1 and $2 per day in 1993 Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), which adjusts for differences in the pricesof goods and services between countries. The $1 per day level is generally used for the leastdeveloped countries, primarily African; the $2-per-day level is used for middle-incomeeconomies such as those of East Asia and Latin America.

The most vitalingredient in Indian cooking, the basicelement with which all dishes begin and, normally, the cheapest vegetable available, the pink onion is an essential item in the shopping basket of families of all classes. A popular saying holds that you will never starve because you can always afford a roti (a piece of simple, flat bread) and an onion. But in recent weeks, the onion has started to seem an unaffordable luxuryfor India's poor. Over the past few days, another sharp surgein prices has begun to unsettle the influential urban middle classes. The sudden spikein prices has been caused by large exports to neighboring countries and a shortage of supply.With its capacity for bringing down governments and scarring political careers, the onion plays an explosiverole in Indian politics. This week reports of rising onion prices have made front-page news and absorbed the attention of the governing elite.

I am a cyclist and a motorist. I fasten my seatbelt when I drive and wear a helmet on my bike to reduce the risk of injury. I am convinced that these are prudent safety measures. I have persuaded many friends to wear helmets on the grounds that transplant surgeons call those without helmets, "donors on wheels”. But a book on 'Risk’ by my colleague John Adams has made me re-examine my convictions.Adams has completely underminedmy confidence in these apparently sensible precautions. What he has persuasively argued, particularly in relation to seat belts, is that the evidence that they do what they are supposed to do is very suspect. This is inspiteofnumerous claims that seat belts save many thousands of lives every year. There is remarkable data from the year 1970 to 1978 in which countries with wearing of seat belts compulsoryhave had on average about 5 per cent more road accident deaths following the introduction of the law. In the UK, road deaths have decreased steadily from about 7,000 a year in 1972 to just over 4,000 in 1989. There is no evidence in the trend for any effect of the seat belt law that was introduced in 1983. Moreover, there is evidence that the number of cyclists and pedestrians killed actually increased by about 10 per cent.

If after years of Spanish classes, some people still find it impossible to understand some native speakers, they should not worry. This does not necessarilymean the lessons were wasted. Millions of Spanish speakers use neither standard Latin American Spanish nor Castilian, which predominate in US schools. The confusion is partly political - the Spanish-speaking world is very diverse. Spanish is the language of 19 separate countries and Puerto Rico. This means that there is no one standard dialect. The most common Spanish dialect taught in the US is standard Latin American. It is sometimes called "Highland" Spanish since it is generally spoken in the mountainousareas of Latin America. While each country retains its own accentsand has some unique vocabulary, residents of countries such as Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia generally speak Latin American Spanish, especially in urban centers. This dialect is noted for its pronunciationof each letter and its strong "r" sounds. This Spanish was spoken in Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and was brought to the Americas by the early colonists. However, the Spanish of Madrid and of northern Spain, called Castilian, developed characteristicsthat never reached the New World. These include the pronunciation of "ci" and "ce" as "th." In Madrid, "gracias" (thank you) becomes "gratheas" (as opposed to "gras-see-as" in Latin America). Another difference is the use of the word "vosotros" (you all, or you guys) as the informal form of "ustedes" in Spain. Castilian sounds to Latin Americans much like British English sounds to US residents.

The ocean floor is home to many unique communities of plants and animals. Most of these marine ecosystems are near the water surface, such as the Great Barrier Reef, a 2,000-km long coral formationoff the northeastern coast of Australia. Coral reefs, like nearly all complex living communities, depend on solar energy for growth (photosynthesis). The sun's energy, however, penetrates at most only about 300 m below the surface of the water. The relatively shallow penetration of solar energy and the sinking of cold, subpolar water combine to make most of the deep ocean floor a frigidenvironment with few life forms. In 1977, scientists discovered hot springs at a depth of 2.5 km, on the Galapagos Rift (spreading ridge) off the coast of Ecuador. This exciting discovery was not really a surprise.Since the early 1970s, scientists had predicted that hot springs (geothermal vents) should be found at the active spreading centers along the mid- oceanic ridges, where magma, at temperatures over 1,000 °Presumably was being erupted to form new oceanic crust. More exciting, because it was totally unexpected,was the discovery of abundant and unusual sea life - giant tube worms, huge clams, and mussels - that thrivedaround the hot springs.

An exotictype of diamond may have come to Earth from outer space, scientists say. Called carbonado or "black" diamonds, the mysteriousstones are found in Brazil and the Central African Republic. They are unusualfor being the color of charcoal and full of frothy bubbles. The diamonds, which can weighin at more than 3,600 carats, can also have a face that looks like melted glass. Because of their oddappearance, the diamonds are unsuitableas gemstones. But they do have industrial applications and were used in the drill bits that helped dig the Panama Canal. Now a team led by Stephen Haggerty of Florida International University in Miami has presented a new study suggestingthat the odd stones were brought to Earth by an asteroid billions of years ago. The findings were published online in the journal Astrophysical Journal Letters on December 20. The scientists exposed polished pieces of carbonado to extremely intense infrared light. The test revealed the presence of many hydrogen-carbon bonds, indicating that the diamonds probably formed in a hydrogen-rich environment—such as that found in space. The diamonds also showed strong similaritiesto tiny Nano diamonds, which are frequently found in meteorites. "They're not identical,"Haggerty said, "but they're very similar." Astrophysicists, he added, have developed theories predicting that Nano diamonds form easily in the titanic stellar explosions called supernovas, which scatter debris through interstellar space. The deposits in the Central African Republic and Brazil, he said, probablycome from the impact of a diamond- rich asteroid billions of years ago, when South America and Africa were joined.

HERIOT-WATT University in Edinburgh has become the first in Europe to offer an MBA in Arabic. Arab students will be able to sign up to study at a distancefor the business courses in their own language. The Edinburgh Business School announcedthe project at a reception in Cairo on Saturday. It is hoped the course will improve links between the university and the Arab business world. A university spokeswoman said: "The Arabic MBA will raisethe profile of Heriot-Watt University and the Edinburgh Business School among businesses in the Arabic speaking world and will create a strong network of graduates in the region."The first intakeof students is expected later this year. Professor Keith Lumsden, director of Edinburgh Business School, said: "Arabic is a major global language and the Arab world is a center for business and industrial development. We are proud to work with Arab International Education to meetthedemandsof the region."

Fancy locust for lunch? Probably not, if you live in the west, but elsewhere it’s a different story. Edible insects – termites, stick insects, dragonflies, grasshoppers and giant water bugs – are on the menu for an estimated80 percent of the world’s population, More than 1000 species of insects are servedup around the world. For example, “kungu cakes” – made from midges – are a delicacyin parts of Africa. Mexico is an insect-eating – or entomophagous – hotspot, where more than 200 insect species are consumed. Demandis so high that 40 species are now under threat,including white agave worms. These caterpillars of the tequila giant-skipper butterfly fetcharound $250 a kilogram. Eating insects makes nutritionalsense. Some contain more proteinthan meat or fish. The female gypsy moth, for instance, is about 80 percent protein. Insects can be a good sourceof vitamins and minerals too: a type of caterpillar (Usta Terpsichore) eaten in Angola is rich in iron, zinc and thiamine. What do they taste like? Ants have a lemon tang, apparently, whereas giant water bugs taste of mint and fire ant pupae of watermelon. You have probably, inadvertently, already tasted some of these things, as insects are often accidental tourists in other types of food. The US Food and Drug Administration even issues guidelines for the number of insect parts allowed in certain foods. For example, it is acceptablefor 225 grams of macaroni to contain up to 225 insect fragments.

There were twenty-six freshmen majoringin English at Beijing Language Institute in the class of 1983. I was assigned to Group Two with another eleven boy and girls who has comefrom big cities in China. I was toldthat language study required smallness so that we would each get more attention from the skillful teachers. The better the school, the smaller the class. I realized that my classmates were ready all talkingin English, simple sentences tossed out to each other in their red-faced introductions and carefree chatting. Their intonations were curving and dramatic and their pronunciation refined and accurate. But as I stretched to catch the drips and drops of their humming dialogue, I couldn’t understandit all, only that it was English. Those words now flying before me sounded a little familiar. I had read them and tried to speak them, but I had never heard them spokenback to me in such a speedy, fluent manner. My big plan of beatingthe city folks was thawing before my eyes.

Jean Piaget, the pioneering Swiss philosopher and psychologist, spent much of his professional life listening to children, watching children and poringover reports of researchers around the world who were doing the same. He found, to put it most succinctly, that children don't think like grownups. After thousands of interactions with young people often barely old enough to talk, Piaget began to suspectthat behind their cute and seemingly illogical utterances were thought processes that had their own kind of order and their own special logic. Einstein called it a discovery“so simple that only a genius could have thought of it.” Piaget's insight opened a new window into the inner workings of the mind. By the end of a wide-ranging and remarkably prolificresearch career that spanned nearly 75 years, from his first scientific publication at age 10 to work still in progress when he died at 84, Piaget had developed several new fields of science: developmental psychology, cognitive theory and what came to be called genetic epistemology Although not an educational reformerhe fashioneda way of thinking about children that provided the foundation for today’s education-reform movements. It was a shift comparable to the displacement of stories of "noble savages” and "cannibals” by modern anthropology. One might say that Piaget was the first to take children's thinking seriously.

What is a country, and how is a country defined? When people ask how many countries there are in the world, they expect a simple answer. After all, we've explored the wholeplanet, we have international travel, satellite navigation and plenty of global organizations like the United Nations, sowe should really know how many countries there are! However, the answer to the question varies according to whom you ask. Mostpeople say there are 192 countries, but others point out that there could be more like 260 of them. Sowhy isn't there a straightforward answer? The problem arises because there isn't a universally agreed definition of 'country' and because, for political reasons, some countries find it convenient to recognize or not recognize othercountries.

The space work for an astronaut can be inside or outside,inside they can monitor machines and the work is carriedout alongside the craft. They also need to make sure the Space Travel.Outsidethe craft, they can see how the seeds react in the space. Some seeds company send seeds to them to investigatehow seeds change their biological character. When outside the craft, they can setupexperiments or clean up the space rubbish.

A DOG may be man's best friend. But man is not always a dog's. Over the centuries selectivebreeding has pulled at the canine body shape to produce what is often a grotesque distortion of the underlying wolf. Indeed, some of these distortions are, when found in people, regarded as pathologies.Dog breeding does, though, offer a chance to those who would like to understand how body shape is controlled. The ancestry of pedigree pooches is well recorded, their generation time is short and their littersize is reasonably large, so there is plenty of material to work with. Moreover,breeds are, by definition, inbred, and this simplifies genetic analysis. Those such as Elaine Ostrander, of America's National Human Genome Research Institute, who wish to identify the genetic basis of the features of particular pedigrees thus have an idealexperimental animal.

Alaska's Aleutian Islands have long been accustomed to shipwrecks. They have been part of local consciousness since a Japanese whaling ship ran agroundnear the western end of the 1,100-mile (1,800-km) volcanic archipelagoin 1780, inadvertently naming what is now Rat Island when the ship's infestation scurriedashore and made itself at home. Since then, there have been at least 190 shipwrecksin the islands.

Complementary therapies - such as those practicedby naturopaths, chiropractors and acupuncturists - have become increasingly popular in Australia over the last few decades.Interest initially coincided with enthusiasmfor alternative lifestyles, while immigration and increased contact and trade with China have also had an influence.The status of complementary therapies is being re-visited in a number of areas: legal regulation; the stances of doctors' associations; their inclusion in medical education; and scientific research into their efficacy.

It originally referred to the production of goods to meet customer demandexactly in time, quality and quantity, whetherthe ‘customer’ is the final purchaser of the product or another process furtheralong the production line.

Egg-eating snakes are a small group of snakes whose dietconsists only of eggs. Some eat only small eggs, which they have to swallow whole,as the snake has no teeth. Instead, some other snakes eat bigger eggs, but it requires special treatment.These snakes have spines that stick out from the backbone. The spines crackthe egg openas it passes through the throat.

Both farms were by far the largest, most prosperous, most technologically advanced farms in their respectivedistricts. In particular, each was centred around a magnificent state-of-the-art barn for shelteringand milking cows. Those structures, both neatly dividedinto oppositefacing rows of cow stalls, dwarfed all other barns in the district. Both farms let their cows grazeoutdoors in lush pastures during the summer, produced their own hay to harvest in the late summer for feeding the cows through the winter, and increasedtheir production of summer fodder and winter hay by irrigating their fields.

In an often-cited study about counterfactuals, Medvec, Madey, and Gilovich (1995) found that bronze medalists appeared happier than silver medalists in television coverage of the 1992 Summer Olympics. Medvec et al. arguedthat bronze medalists compared themselves to 4th place finishers, whereassilver medalists compared themselves to gold medalists. These counterfactuals were the most salientbecause they were either qualitatively different (gold vs. silver) or categorically different (medal vs. no medal) from what actuallyoccurred. Drawing on archival data and experimental studies, we show that Olympic athletes (among others) are more likely to make counterfactual comparisons based on their priorexpectations, consistent with decision affect theory. Silver medalists are more likely to be disappointed because their personal expectations are higher than thoseof bronze medalists.

David Lynch is professor and head of education at Charles Darwin University. Priorto this he was sub dean in the Faculty of Education and Creative Arts at Central Queensland University and foundation head of the University’s Noosa campus.David’s career in education began as a primary school teacher in Queensland in the early 1980’s and progressedto four principal positions before enteringhigher education. David’s research interests predominate in teacher education with particular interest in building teacher capability to meet a changed world.

In his fascinatingbook Carbon Detox, George Marshall argues that people are not persuaded by information. Our views are formed by the views of the people with whom we mix. Of the narrativesthat might penetrate these circles, we are more likely to listen to those that offer us some reward. A story that tells us that the world is cooking and that we'll have to make sacrifices for the sake of future generations is less likely to be accepted than the more rewarding idea that climate change is a conspiracy hatched by scheming governments and venal scientists, and that strong, independent-minded people should unite to defend their freedoms. He proposes that instead of arguing for sacrifice, environmentalistsshould show where the rewards might lie: that understanding what the science is saying and planning accordingly is the smart thing to do, which will protect your interests more effectively than flinging abuse at scientists. We should emphasizethe old- fashioned virtues of uniting in the face of a crisis, of resourcefulness and community action. Projects like the transition town’s network and proposals for a green new deal tell a story which people are more willing to hear.

The increasing darkness in the Northern Hemisphere this time of year "indicates to the plant that autumnis coming on. So it starts recouping materials from the leavesbefore they drop off. Evergreens protect their needle-like foliage from freezing with waxycoatings and natural "antifreezes." But broadleaf plants, like sugar maples, birches, and sumacs, have no such protections. As a result, they shedtheir leaves. But before they do, the plants first try to salvageimportant nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus.

Leonard Lauder, chief executive of the company his mother founded, says she always thought she "was growing a nice little business." And that it is. A little business that controls45% of the cosmetics market in U.S. department stores. A little business that sells in 118 countries and last year grew to be $3.6 billion big in sales. The Lauder family's shares are worth more than $6 billion. But early on, there wasn't a burgeoning business, there weren't houses in New York, Palm Beach, Fla., or the south of France. It is said that at one point there was one person to answer the telephones who changedher voice to become the shipping or billing department as needed. You more or less know the Estée Lauder story because it's a chapter from the book of American business folklore. In short, Josephine Esther Mentzer, daughter of immigrants, lived above her father's hardware store in Corona, a section of Queens in New York City. She started her enterpriseby selling skin creams concocted by her uncle, a chemist, in beauty shops, beach clubs and resorts. No doubt the portions were good — Estée Lauder was a quality fanatic — but the saleslady was better. Much better. And she simply outworked everyone else in the cosmetics industry. She stalkedthe bosses of New York City department stores until she got some counter space at Saks Fifth Avenue in 1948. And once in that space, she utilized a personal selling approach that proved as potentas the promise of her skin regimensand perfumes.

The principal recommendation of the world conferences was that countries must take full responsibility for their own development. National responsibility for national development is the necessary consequence of sovereignty.The Monterrey Consensus states that ‘Each country has primary responsibility for its own economic and social development, and the role of national policies and development strategies cannot be over-emphasized.The Johannesburg Plan of Implementation called for all governments to begin implementing national sustainable development strategies (NSDS) by 2005 and the 2005 Summit agreed on a target of 2006 for all developing countries to adoptand start implementationof these strategies to achievethe internationally agreed goals. The automatic corollaryof that principle is that each country must be free to determine its own development strategy. It is essential that all donors and lenders accept the principle of country ownership of national development strategies. This implies the acceptance of the principle that development strategies should not only be attunedto country circumstances, but also be prepared and implemented under the leadership of the governments of the countries themselves. The 2005 World Summit also acknowledged, in this regard,that all countries must recognizethe need for developing countries to strike a balancebetween their national policy priorities and their international commitments.

Mount Everest called Chomolungma ("goddess mother of the world") in Tibet and Sagarmatha ("goddess of the sky") in Nepal, Mount Everest once went by the pedestrian name of Peak XV among Westerners. That was before surveyorsestablished that it was the highest mountain on Earth, a fact that came as something of a surprise—Peak XV had seemed lost in the crowd of other formidable Himalayan peaks, many of which gave the illusionof greater height. In 1852, the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India measured Everest's elevation as 29,002 feet above sea level. This figure remained the officially acceptedheight for more than one hundred years. In 1955, it was adjusted by a mere 26 feet to 29,028 (8,848 m). The mountain received its official name in 1865 in honor of Sir George Everest, the British Surveyor General from 1830—1843 who had mapped the Indian subcontinent. He had some reservationsabout having his name bestowed on the peak, arguing that the mountain should retain its local appellation, the standard policy of geographical societies. Before the Survey of India, a number of other mountains ranked supreme in the eyes of the world. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the Andean peak Chimborazo was considered the highest. At a relatively unremarkable 20,561 feet (6,310 m), it is in fact nowhere near the highest, surpassedby about thirty other Andean peaks and several dozen in the Himalayas. In 1809, the Himalayan peak Dhaulagiri (26,810 ft.; 8,172 m) was declared the ultimate, only to be shunted aside in 1840 by Kanchenjunga (28,208 ft.; 8,598 m), which today ranks third. Everest's status has been unrivalled for the last century-and-a-half, but not without a few threats.

For all his fame and celebration, William Shakespeare remains a mysterious figurewith regards to personal history. There are just two primary sourcesfor information on the Bard: his works, and variouslegal and churchdocuments that have survived from Elizabethan times. Naturally,there are many gapsin this body of information, which tells us little about Shakespeare the man.

Researchers already know that spending long periods of time in a zero-gravity environment-- such as that inside the International Space Station (ISS) -- result in loss of bone density and damageto the body’s muscles. That’s partly why stays aboard the ISS are limitedat six months. And now, a number of NASA astronauts are reporting that their 20/20 visionfaded after spending time in space, with many needing glasses once they returned to Earth.

Before effective anaesthetics, surgery was very crude and very painful. Before 1800, alcohol and opium had littlesuccess in easing pain during operations. Laughing gas was used in 1844 in dentistry in the USA, but failed to ease all pain and patients remainedconscious. Ether (used from 1846) made patients totally unconscious and lasted a long time. However, it could make patients cough during operations and sick afterwards. It was highly flammable and wastransportedin heavy glass bottles. Chloroform (used from 1847) was very effective with few side effects. However, it was difficult to get the dose right and could kill some people becauseofthe effect on their heart. An inhaler helped to regulate the dosage.

Currently, there is concern about the increasing amount of time children spend engagedin sedentary activities, the number of children who fail to achieve minimumdaily physical activity guidelines (i.e. 60 min of moderate-to-vigorous intensity activities every day), and the apparent increase in obesity prevalence as a result of such sedentary behavior.Screen-based activities, including television, viewing and playing computer games are among the most frequently observed sedentary activities that children partake3 with children spending 2.5-4 h per day participating in such activities. The introduction of “active video games” (AVGs) into the gaming market presents an opportunity to convert traditional, sedentary screen-time in to active screen-time and thus increase total daily energy expenditure (EE). Modern AVGs utilize cameras and motion sensors to allow the gamer to physically perform a variety of actions, dependenton the console, such as swinging a tennis racquet or running. The most demanding AVGs provided similar responses to walking and, based on international standards, should be classified as low- intensity activities. Whilst AVGs may provide children with a better alternative to sedentary gaming, they are not a sufficient replacementfor normal physical activity, e.g. sports and outdoor play.

Americans approached a record level of generosity last year. Of the $260.28 billion given to charity in 2005, 76.5% of it came from individual donors.These people gave across the range of non-profit bodies, from museums to religious organizations, with a heavy emphasison disaster relief after the Asian tsunami and US hurricanes. In total, Americans gave away 2.2% of their household income in 2005, slightly above 40-year average.

People move to a new region for many different reasons. The motivationfor moving can come from a combination of what researchers sometimes call 'push and pull factors' – those that encourage people to leave a region, and those that attract people to a region. Some of the factors that motivate people to move includeseeking a better climate, finding more affordable housing, looking for work or retiring from work, leaving the congestionof city living, wanting a more pleasant environment, and wanting to be near to family and friends. In reality, many complex factorsand personal reasons may interactto motivate a person or family to move.

Legal deposit has existed in English law since 1662. It helps to ensure that the nation’s published output (and thereby its intellectualrecord and future published heritage) is collected systematically, to preservethe material for the use of future generations and to make it available for readerswithin the designated legal deposit libraries. The legal deposit system also has benefitsfor authors and publishers: Deposited publications are made available to users of the deposit libraries on their premises, are preserved for the benefit of future generations, and become part of the nation’s heritage. Publications are recorded in the online catalogues, and become an essential researchresource for generations to come.

Fingerprints can provethat a suspect was actually at the scene of a crime. As long as a human entered a crime scene, there will be traces of DNA. DNA can help the police to identifyan individual to crack a case. An institute in London can help preserveDNA and be used to match with the samplestaken from the crime scenes.

With their punk hairstyles and bright colors, marmosets and tamarins are among the most attractive primates on earth. These fast-moving, lightweight animals live in the rainforests of South America. Their small size makesit easy for them to dart about the trees, catching insects and small animals such as lizards, frogs, and snails. Marmosets have another unusual food source- they use their chisel-like incisor teeth to dig into tree bark and lap up the gummy sap that seeps out, leaving telltale, oval-shaped holes in the brancheswhen they have finished. But as vast tracts of rainforest are cleared for plantations and cattle ranches marmosets and tamarins are in serious dangerof extinction.

Sydney is becoming effective in making the best of its limited available unconstrained land. Sydney is suitable for integrating suitable business, office, residential, retail and other development in accessible locations so as to maximise public transport patronageand encourage walking and cycling. Also this city can reduce the consumptionof land for housing and associated urban development on the urban fringe. For the proposed mixed business, mixed use and business park areas, there was no employment data available for comparableareas. It is also concluded that lack of housing supply will affect affordabilityin Sydney.

A bonus of dendrochronology is that the width and substructure of each ring reflectthe amount of rain and the seasonat which the rain fell during that particular year. Thus, tree ring studies also allow one to reconstruct pastclimate; e.g., a series of wide rings means a wet period, and a seriesof narrow rings means a drought.

This is the first study to show that the Andes have been a majorsource of diversityfor the Amazon basin, one of the largest reservoirsof biological diversity on Earth. The finding runs counterto the idea that Amazonian diversity is the result of evolution only within the tropicalforest itself. “Basically, the Amazon basin is ‘melting pot’ for South American frogs,” says graduate student Juan Santos, lead author of the study. “Poison frogs there have come from multiple places of origin,notably the Andes Mountains, over many millions of years. We have shown that you cannot understand Amazonian biodiversity by looking only in the basin.Adjacent regions have played a major role.”

While Florey researchers have also created a genetic test for PD (10% of PD cases are caused by genetic factors), this new test has a broader applicationby screening for many different types of PD and monitoring treatment, as well as measuring the effectivenessof drugs being developed to treat the disease. Dr Qiao-Xin Li and colleagues from The University of Melbourne and The Mental Health Research Institute of Victoria, along with Prof Malcolm Horne from the Howard Florey Institute, found people with PD had low levels of the brain-secreted protein ‘alpha-synuclein' in their blood, whilepeople without PD had high levels of the protein. Prof Horne said the test they developed measured alpha-synuclein levels in blood. “Currently there is no specific PD diagnostic test so doctors rely on their observations to make a diagnosis, which means some patients may not be prescribed the most suitable medication and around 15% of those diagnosedmay actually be suffering from something else,” Prof Horne said. Further studies are required to establish whether this test can distinguishbetween people who are responsive to treatment and those who are not,” he said. The researchers are now conducting a large-scale study to determine the effectiveness of the test, to discover whether it is applicable for all types of PD, and to find out if it can measure the rate of progressionand severity of the disease.

In the U.S., artists in the mid-1950s began to create a bridgeto Pop. Strongly influenced by Dada and its emphasison appropriation and everyday objects, artists increasingly worked with collage,consumer products, and a healthy dose of irony. Jasper Johns reimaginediconic imagery like the American flag; Robert Rauschenberg employed silk-screen printings and found objects; and Larry Rivers used images of mass- produced goods. All three are considered American forerunnersof Pop.

Allergies are abnormal immune system reactions to things that are typically harmless to most people. When you’re allergic to something, your immune system mistakenlybelieves that this substance is harmful to your body. Substances that cause allergic reactions — such as certain foods, dust, plant pollen, or medicines — are known as allergens. In an attempt to protectthe body, the immune system produces IgE antibodiesto that allergen. Those antibodies then cause certain cells in the body to releasechemicals into the bloodstream, one of which is histamine. The histamine then actson a person's eyes, nose, throat, lungs, skin, or gastrointestinal tract and causes the symptoms of the allergic reaction. Future exposure to that same allergen will trigger this antibody response again. This means that every time you come into contact with that allergen, you'll have an allergic reaction.

Equitable and sustainable management of water resources is a major global challenge. About one third of the world’s population lives in countries with moderate to high water stress, with disproportionatelyhigh impacts on the poor. With respect to the currentprojected human population growth, industrial development and the expansion of irrigated agriculture in the next two decades,water demand is expected to rise to levels that will make the task of providing water for human sustenancemore difficult. Since its establishment, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has worked to promote sustainable water resources management practices through collaborativeapproaches at the national, regional and global levels. After more than 30 years, water resources management continues to be a strong pillar of UNEP’S work. UNEP is actively participating in addressing water issues together with partner unagenciesother organisations and donors. They facilitate and catalyse water resource assessments in various developing countries; implement projects that assist countries in developing integrated water resource management plans; create awareness of innovative alternative technologies and assist the development. implementation and enforcement of water resource management policies, laws and regulations.

Deciding to go to business school is perhaps the simplest part of what can be a complicated process. With nearly 600 accredited MBA programmes on offeraround the world, the choice of where to study can be overwhelming. Here we explain how to choosethe right school and course for you and unravel the application and funding process. "Probably the majorityof people applying to business school are at a point in their careers where they know they wantto shake things up, but they don't know exactly what they want to do with their professional lives," says Stacy Blackman, an MBA admissions consultant based in Los Angeles. "If that's the case with you, look at other criteria:culture, teaching method, location, and then pick a place that’s a good fit for you with a strong general management programme. Super-defined career goals don’t have to be a part of this process."

Having tracked down research that is relevantto your area of interest the next task is to actually make sense of that research. This section is intended to show you how to be critical of the research you arereviewingand how to check that the evidenceis credible and represented appropriately. Unfortunately this means discussing the ways in which research findings may be misrepresented.

The Nature Conservation Amendment Act of 1996 enables the Minister of Environment and Tourism to register a conservancy if it has a representativecommittee, a legal constitution, which provides for the sustainable management and utilisation of game in the conservancy, the ability to managethe funds, an approved method for the equitabledistribution of benefits to members of the community and defined boundaries.

Over the last ten thousand years there seem to have been two separate and conflicting building sentiments throughout the history of towns and cities. Oneis the desire to start again, for a variety of reasons: an earthquake or a tidal wave may have demolished the settlement, or fire destroyed it, or the new city marksa new political beginning. The other can be likened to the effect of a magnet: established settlements attract people, who tendtocome whether or not there is any planning for their arrival. The clash between these two sentiments is evident in every established city unlessits development has been almost completely accidental or is lost in history. Incidentally, many settlements have been planned from the beginning but, for a variety of reasons, no settlement followed the plan. A good example is Currowan, on the Clyde River in New South Wales, which wassurveyedin the second half of the 19th century, in expectation that people would come to establish agriculture and a small port. But no one came. Most country towns in New South Wales started with an original survey whose grid lines are still there today in the pattern of the original streets.

What is the significance of instinct in business? Does a reliable gut feeling separate winners from losers? And is it the most valuable emotional tool any entrepreneur can possess? My observationsof successful company owners lead me to believe that a highly analytical attitude can be a drawback. At critical junctures in commercial life, risk-taking is more an actof faith than a carefully balanced choice. Frequently, such moments require decisivenessand absolute conviction above all else. There is simply no time to wait for all the facts, or room for doubt. A computer program cannot tell you how to invent and launch a new product.That journeyinvolves too many unknowns, too much luck - and too much sheer intuition, rather than the infallible logicthat machines deliver so well. As Chekhov said: “An artist’s flair is sometimes worth a scientist’s brains” - entrepreneurs need right-brain thinking. When I have been considering whether to buy a company and what price to offer, I have been blindedtoo often by reams of due diligence from the accountants and lawyers. Usually it pays to stand back from such mountains of grey data and weigh up the really important issues-and decide how you feel about the opportunity.

The recipe for making any creature is written in its DNA. So last November when geneticists published the near-complete DNA sequence of the long-extinct woolly mammoth, there was much speculation about whether we could bring this behemoth back to life. Creating a living, breathing creature from a genome sequence that exists only in a computer's memory is not possible right now. But someone someday is sure to try it, predictsStephan Schuster, a molecularbiologist at Pennsylvania State University, University Park, and a drivingforce behind the mammoth genome project.

Music was as important to the ancient Egyptians as it is in our modern society Although it is thought that music played a rolethroughout the history of Egypt, those that studythe Egyptian writings have discovered that music seemedto become more important in what is called the ‘pharaonic’ periodof their history. This was the timewhen the Egyptian dynasties of the pharaohs were established(around 3100 BCE) and music was found in many parts of every day Egyptian life.

With the increase in women 's participationin the labour force, many mothers have less time availableto undertake domestic activities. At the same time, there has been increasing recognitionthat the father 's role and relationshipwith a child is important. A father can have many rolesin the family, ranging from income provider to teacher, carer, playmate and role model. Therefore, balancing paid work and family responsibilities can be an important issue for both fathers and mothers in families.

It is important to emphasizethe need for hard work as an essential part of studying law, because far too many students are tempted to think that they can succeed by relying on what they imagine to be their natural ability, without bothering to add the expenditure of effort. To take an analogy some people prefer the more or less instant gratificationwhich comes from watching television adaptation of a classic novel to the rather more laboriousprocess of reading the novel itself. Those who preferwatching television to reading the book are less likely to study law successfully, unless they rapidly acquire a tastefor text-based materials.

Leadership is all about being granted permission by others to lead their thinking. It is a bestowed moral authority that gives the right to organise and direct the efforts of others. But moral authority does not come from simply managing people effectively or communicating better or being able to motivate. It comes from many sources,including being authentic and genuine, having integrity, and showing a real and deep understanding of the business in question. All these factorsbuild confidence. Leaders lose moral authority for three reasons: they behave unethically;they become plagued by self-doubt and lose their conviction; or they are blinded by power lose self-awareness and thus lose connectionwith those they lead as the context around them changes. Having said all this, it has to be assumed that if someone becomes a leader, at some point they understood the difference between right and wrong it is up to them to abidebya moral code and up to us to ensure that the moment we suspect they do not, we fire them or vote them out.

Timing is important for revision. Have you noticed that during the school day you get times when you just don't care any longer? I don't mean the lessons you don't like, but the ones you find usually find OK, but on some occasions, you just can't be botheredwith it. You mayhave other things on your mind, be tired, restless or looking forward to what comes next. Whatever the reason, that particular lesson doesn't get 100 percent effortfrom you. The same is true of revision. Your mental and physical attitudeis important. If you try to revise when you are tired or totally occupied with something else, your revision will be inefficient and just about worthless. If you approach it feeling fresh, alert and happy, it will be so much easier, and you will learn more, faster. However, if you make no plans and just slip in a little bit of revision when you feel like it, you probably won’t do much revision! You need a revision timetable, so you don't keep puttingitoff.

Distance learning can be highly beneficial to a large variety of people from young students wanting to expand their horizons to adults looking for more job security. With programs that allow learners of all ages to take courses for fun, personal advancement and degrees, distance learning can meet the needsof a diverse population. Perhaps one of the most notable and often talked about advantagesof distance learning is the flexibility. The majority of programs allow students to learn when and where it's convenient for them. For thosewho are struggling to balance their distance learning goals with working a fulltime job and taking care of a family this kind of flexibility can allow many people to pursue education who would not otherwise be able to do so. Sincethere are no on-campus courses to attend, students can learn from their own homes, at work on their lunch breaks and from virtually anywhere with internet access. For some it can even be a big source of savings on the fuel costs and time required to commute to classes.

To learn the speech of alchemy, an early form of chemistry in which people attempted to turn metals into gold, it helps to think back to a time when there was no science:no atomic number or weight, no periodic chart no list of elements. to the alchemists the universewas not made of leptons, bosons, gluons, and quarks. Instead it was made of substances, and one substance-say, walnut oil-could be just as pureas another-say, silver- even though modern scientistswould say one is heterogeneous and the other homogeneous. Without knowledge of atomic structures, how would it be possibleto tell elements from compounds?

The narrative of law and order is located fundamentally at the level of individual guilt and responsibility. Criminal acts are seen as individual issues of personal responsibility and culpability,to which the state responds by way of policing, prosecution,adjudication and punishment. This is but one level at which crime and criminal justice can be analysed. The problem is that so often analysis ends there, at the level of individual action, characterisedin terms of responsibility, guilt, evil. In few other areas of social life does individualism have this hold. To take but one instance,it would be absurd to restrict analysis of obesity, to individual greed. It should similarly be widely seen as absurd to restrict analysis of criminal justice issues to the culpability of individuals.

A new interdisciplinary centre for the study of the frontiers of the universe, from the tiniest subatomic particle to the largest chain of galaxies, has been formed at The University of Texas at Austin. The Texas Cosmology Centre will be a way for the university's departments of Astronomy and Physics to collaborateon research that concerns them both “This centre will bring the two departments together in an area where they overlap--inthe physics of the very early universe,” said Dr. Neal Evans, Astronomy Department chair. Astronomical observations have revealedthe presence of dark matter and dark energy, discoveriesthat challenge our knowledge of fundamental physics. And today's leading theories in physics involveenergies so high that no Earth-bound particle accelerator can test them. They need the universe as their laboratorySteven Weinberg, Nobel laureate and professor of physics at the university, called the Centre's advent”(movement)avery exciting development “for that department.

The foreign policy of a state, it is often argued, begins and ends with the border. No doubt an exaggeration, this aphorism nevertheless has an elementof truth. A state's relation with its neighbours, at least in the formativeyears, are greatly influencedby its frontier policy, especially when there are no settledborders. Empire builders in the past sought to extend imperial frontiers for a variety of reasons; subjugation of kings and princes to gain their allegiance(as well as handsome tributes or the coffers of the state), and, security of the 'core' of the empire from external attacks by establishing a string of buffer states in areas adjoiningthe frontiers. The history of British empire in India was no different. It is important to note in this connection that the concept of international boundaries (between two sovereign states), demarcated and delineated,was yet to emerge in India under Mughal rule.

Life expectancy at birth is one of the most widely used and internationally recognised indicators of population health. It focuses on the length of life ratherthan its quality, and provides a useful summary of the general health of the population. While an indicator describing how long Australians live that simultaneously takes into account quality of life would be a desirable summary measure of progress in the area, currently no such measure exists, and this is why life expectancy at birth is used as the Main Progress Indicator here. During the decade 1999 to 2009, life expectancy at birth improved for both sexes. A girl born in 2009 could expect to reach 83.9 years of age, whilea boy could expect to live to 79.3 years. Over the decade, boys 'life expectancy increased slightly more than girls'(3.1 compared with 2.1 years). This saw the gap between the sexes' life expectancy decrease by one year to 4.6 years In the longer term, increases inlife expectancy also occurred over mostof the 20th century. Unfortunately, life expectancy isn't shared across the whole population though, being lower in Tasmania and the northern Territory, and for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Comparing the intelligence of animals of different species is difficult, how do you compare a dolphin and a horse? Psychologists have a technique for looking at intelligence that doesnot require the cooperation of the animal involved. The relative size of an individual's brain is a reasonable indication of intelligence. Comparing acrossspecies is not as simple as generally expected. An elephant will have a larger brain than a human simply because it is a large beast. Instead,we use the Cephalization index, which compare the size of an animal's brain to the size of its body. Based on the Cephalization index, the brightest animals on the planet are humans, followedby great apes, porpoises and elephants. As a general rule,animals that hunt for a living (like canines) are smarter than strict vegetarians (you don't need much intelligence to outsmart a leaf of lettuce). Animals that live in social groups are always smarter and have large EQ's than solitary animals.

Organisations need to integrate their sales activities more both internally and with customers' needs according to a new book co-authored by an academic at the University of East Anglia. The book addresseshow sales can help organisations to become more customer oriented and considers how they are responding to challenges such as increasing competition, more demandingcustomers and a more complex selling environment. Many organisations are facing escalating costs and a growth in customer power, whichmakes it necessary to allocate resources more strategically. The sales function can provide critical customer and market knowledge to help inform both innovation and marketing. However, the authors say that within the industry thereis still uncertainty about the shape a future sales team should take, how it should be managed, and how it fitsinto their organisations business model.

Progressive enhancement is a design practice based on the idea that instead of designingforthe least capable browser, or mangling our code to make a site look the same in every browser, we should provide a core set of functionality and information to all users, and then progressivelyenhance the appearance and behaviour of the site for users of more capable browsers. It's very productive development practice Insteadofspendinghours working out how to add drop shadows to the borders of an element in every browser, we simply use the standards-based approach for browsers that support it and don't even attempt to implement it in browsers that don’t. After all, the users of older and less capable browsers wont know what they are missing. The biggest challengeto progressive enhancement is the belief among developers and clients that websites should look the same in every browser. As a developer, you can simplify your life and dedicate your time to more interesting challenges if you let go of this outdated notion and embrace progressive enhancement.

Snails are not traditionally known for quick thinking, but new research shows they can make complex decisions using just two brain cells in findingsthat could help engineers design more efficient robots. Scientists at the University of Sussex attached electrodes to the headsof freshwater snails as they searched for lettuce. They found that just one cell was used by the mollusc to tell if it was hungryor not, while another let it know when food was present. Foodsearching is an example of goal-directed behaviour, during which an animal must integrate information about both its external environment and internal state while using as little energy as possible. Lead researcher Professor George Kemenes, sai “This will eventually help us design the” brain “of robots based on the principle of using the fewest possible components necessary to perform complex tasks.”What goes on in our brains when we make complex behavioural decisions and carry them out is poorly understood.”Our study reveals for the first time how just two neurons can create a mechanism in an animal's brain which drives and optimises complex decision-making tasks.

Language comes so naturally to us that it is easy to forget what a strange and miraculous gift it is. All over the world members of our speciesfashion their breath into hisses and hums and squeaks and pops and listen to others do the same. We do this, of course, not only because we like the sounds but because details of the sounds contain information about the intentionsof the person making them. We humans are fitted with a means of sharingour ideas, in all their unfathomable vastness. When we listen to speech, we can be led to think thoughts that have never been thought before and that never would have occurredto us on our own. Behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence. Energy equals mass times the speed of light squared. I have found it impossible to carry the heavy burden of responsibility and to discharge my duties as King without the help and support of the woman I love.

Chemistry is an extremely important topic in physiology. Most physiological processes occur as the resultof chemical changes that occur within the body. These changes include the influx/efflux of ions across a neuron’s membrane, causing a signalto pass from one end to the other. Other examples include the storageof oxygen in the blood by a protein as it passesthrough the lungs for usagethroughout the body.

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, on Friday at 1845 GMT (1445 EDT), reaching orbit 9 minutes later. The rocket lofted an uncrewed mockupof SpaceX’s Dragon capsule, which is designed to one-day carry both crew and cargo to orbit. “This has been a good day for SpaceX and a promisingdevelopment for the US human space flight programme,” said Robyn Ringuette of SpaceX in a webcast of the launch. In a teleconference with the media on Thursday, SpaceX’s CEO, Paypal co-founder Elon Musk, said he would consider the flight 100 percent successful if it reached orbit.“Even if we prove out just that the first stage functions correctly, I’d still say that’s a good day for a test,” he said. “It’s a great day if both stages work correctly.” SpaceX hopes to win a NASA contractto launch astronauts to the International Space Station using the Falcon 9. US government space shuttles, which currently make these trips, are scheduled to retirefor safety reasons at the end of 2010.

History is selective. What history books tell us about the past is not everything that happened, but what historians haveselected.They cannot put in everything: choices have to be made. Choices must similarly be made about which aspects of the past should be formally taught to the next generation in the shape of school history lessons. So, forexample,when a national school curriculum for England and Wales was first discussed at the end of the 1980s, the history curriculum was the subject of considerable public and media interest.Politicians argued about it; people wrote letters to the press about it; the Prime Minister of the time, Margaret Thatcher, intervenedin the debate. Let us think first about the question of content. There were two main camps on this issue – those who thought the history of Britain should take pride of place,and those who favored what was referred to as 'world history'.

The platypus looks like no other creature on Earth. Physically, it appears to be a hybrid blend of a bird, beaver, reptile and otter, with additional characteristics not contained in any of these four. On cursory examination, the platypus has a bill that most resemblesthat of a waterfowl, not the mouth of any known mammal. Yet it is not an ordinary bill. It is actually a well-designed sensory organ. Not a nose, but a highly sensitive electro-location sensor, detecting miniscule electrical impulses generated by its food source of small crustaceans and worms. No other mammal has a sensor so highly developed--- in fact; only one other mammal has this ability at all. Then thereare the webbed feet, similar to those found on otters. Unlike an otter, however, the webbing is far more pronounced on the front feet of the platypus, which it uses like paddles for swimming. Whilein the water, the back feet are tucked into its body and hardly used at all.

The United Nations is an international organization founded in 1945. Due to its unique international character, and the powers vested in its founding Charter, the organization can take actionon a wide range of issues and provide a forum for its 193 Member States to expresstheir views, through the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council and other bodies and committees. The work of the United Nations reaches every cornerof the globe. Although best known for peacekeeping, peacebuilding, conflict preventionand humanitarian assistance, there are many other ways the United Nations and its System (specialized agencies, funds and programmes) affect our lives and make the world a better place.

A Massey ecologist has teamed up with a leading wildlife photographer to produce the definitive book on New Zealand’s national bird, the kiwi. Kiwi: A Natural History was written by Dr Isabel Castro and featuresphotographs by Rod Morris. Dr Castro has been working with kiwi since1999, with a focus on their behaviour. “I’ve specifically been looking at the sense of smell that kiwi uses when foraging, but alsoin their interactions with their environment and other kiwi,” she says. The book covers all aspects of kiwi, from their evolution, prehistory and closest relatives to their feeding and breeding behaviour and current conservation issues, makingthis the perfect introduction for anyone with an interest in these fascinating birds. The book is the second title in a new serieson New Zealand’s wildlife, targeted at a family readership.

Teens write for a variety of reasons—as part of a school assignment, to geta good grade, to stay in touch with friends, to share their artistic creations with others or simply to put their thoughts to paper (whether virtual or otherwise). In our focus groups, teens said they are motivated to write when they can selecttopics that are relevant to their lives and interests, and report greater enjoyment of school writing when they have the opportunity to write creatively. Having teachers or other adults who challenge them, presentthem with interesting curricula and give them detailed feedback also serves as a motivator for teens. Teens also reportwriting for an audience motivates them to write and write well.

Omniscience may be a foible of men, but it is not so of books. Knowledge, as Johnson said, is of two kinds,you may know a thing yourself, and you may know where to find it. Now the amount which you may actually know yourself must, at its best, be limited, but what you may know of the sourcesof information may, with proper training, become almost boundless. And here come the valueand use of reference books—the working of one book in connexion with another—and applying your own intelligenceto both. By this means we get as near to that omniscient volume which tells everything as ever we shall get, and although the single volume or work which tells everything does not exist, there is a vast number of reference books in existence, a knowledge and proper use of which is essential to every intelligent person. Necessary as I believe reference books to be, they can easily be made to be contributoryto idleness, and too mechanical a use should not be made of them.

DNA is a molecule that does two things. First, it acts as the hereditarymaterial, which is passed down from generation to generation. Second, it directs, to a considerable extent, the construction of our bodies, telling our cells what kinds of molecules to make and guidingour development from a single-celled zygote to a fully formed adult. These two things are of course connected. The DNA sequences that construct the best bodies are more likely to get passed down to the next generation because well-constructed bodies are more likely to survive and thusto reproduce. This is Darwin’s theory of natural selection stated in the language of DNA.

Capital has often been thought of narrowly as physical capital – the machines, tools, and equipment used in the production of other goods, but our wealth and wellbeing also relieson natural capital. If we forget this, we risk degradingthe services that natural ecosystems provide, which support our economies and sustain our lives. These services include purifying our water, regulatingour climate, reducing flood risk, and pollinating our crops. The Natural Capital Project works to provide decision makers with reliableways to assess the true value of the services that ecosystems provide. An essential element of the Natural Capital Project is developing tools that help decision makers protect biodiversity and ecosystem services.

A good story may be given a bad title by its author, and so started toward failure. Novices are peculiarly liableto this fault, usually through allowingthemselves to be too easily satisfied. They go to infinitepains to make the story itself fresh and individual, and then cap it with a commonplacephrase that is worse than no title at all. A good title is apt, specific, attractive, new, and short. A title is apt if it is an outgrowth of the plot—a text, as I have said. It stands definitely for that particular story, and gives a suggestion of what is to come—but only a suggestion, lest it should anticipate the denouement and so satisfythe curiosity of the reader too soon.

A mini helicopter modelled on flying tree seeds could soon be flying overhead. Evan Ulrich and colleagues at the University of Maryland in College Park turnedtothe biological world for inspiration to build a scaled-down helicopter that could mimic the properties of full-size aircraft. The complex designof full-size helicopters gets less efficient when shrunk, meaningthat standard mini helicopters expend most of their power simply fighting to stay stable in the air. The researchers realised that a simpler aircraft designed to stay stable passively would use much less power and reduce manufacturing costs to boot. It turns out that nature hadbeatenthem to it. The seeds of trees such as the maple have a single-blade structure that allowsthem to fly far away and drift safely to the ground. These seeds, known as samaras, need no engine to spinthrough the air, thanks to a process called autorotation. By analysing the behaviour of the samara with high-speed cameras, Ulrich and his team were able to copy its design.

Populations can change through three processes: fertility, mortality, and migration. Fertility involvesthe number of children that women have and is to be contrasted with fecundity (a woman's childbearing potential). Mortality is the study of the causes, consequences, and measurement of processes affecting death to members of the population. Demographers most commonly study mortality using the Life Table, a statistical devicethat provides information about the mortality conditions (most notably the life expectancy) in the population. Migration refers to the movement of persons from a locality of origin to a destination place across some predefined, political boundary. Migration researchers do not designate movements 'migrations' unlessthey are somewhat permanent. Thus demographers do not consider tourists and travellers to be migrating. While demographers who study migration typically do so through census data on place of residence,indirect sources of data including tax forms, and labour force surveys are also important. Demography is today widely taught in many universities across the world, attractingstudents with initial training in social sciences, statistics or health studies.

The rest of Taylor’s restaurant is student-run. Students in quantity food production and service management classesmake the articulate and detailed dishes. "We teach students to understand where a product comes from and to respect that product," Garmy said. Skeptics might doubt the qualityof a student-run restaurant, but one visit to Taylor's will immediately change their outlook. Dishes such as orecchiette and butternut squash, pappardelle with duck and bistro chicken will please any appetite while imparting the need to returnfor a second taste. Students are taught to use ratios and proportions rather than recipes when creating dishes. "Understanding ratios and proportions when creating dishes instead of recipes makes students think and actuallyteaches them how to cook, rather than just reading a recipe and not learning from it," Garmy said. Garmy said he believes in using all aspects of a product, which Taylor's menureflects.

The Ironbridge Gorge World Heritage property covers an area of 5.5 km2 (550ha) and is located in Telford, Shropshire, approximately 50km north-west of Birmingham. The Industrial Revolution hadits18thcenturyrootsin the Ironbridge Gorge before spreading across the world, bringing with it some of the most far-reaching changes in human history. The site incorporatesa5kmlengthof the steep-sided, mineral-rich Severn Valley from a point immediately west of Ironbridge downstream to Coalport, together with two smaller river valleys extending northwards to Coalbrookdale and Madeley. The Ironbridge Gorge offersapowerfulinsightinto the origins of the Industrial Revolution and also contains extensive evidence and remains of that period when the area was the focus of international attention from artists, engineers, and writers. The site contains substantial remains of mines, foundries, factories, workshops, warehouses, iron masters' and workers' housing, public buildings, infrastructure, and transport systems, together with traditionallandscapeandforestsof the Severn Gorge. In addition, there also remain extensivecollectionsof artifacts and archives relating to the individuals, processes, and products that made the area so important. 2020.11.13

The purpose of this paper is to consider the claim, often made, that computer simulation exercises provide an excellent source of speaking practice. In so doing I shall first consider the properties of computer simulations from a theoretical point of view, then describe the experience of usinga particular simulation with a general EFL class. On the basis of this experience,and of some very straightforward pedagogical considerations, I shall argue that the claim is justified, subjectto a very important caveat: computer simulations can form the basis of excellent speaking exercises, provided you do not expect the computer to do all the work. Put in another way, many computer simulations only attaintheir full potential as language exercises if they are integratedinto a larger, planned, teacher-managed activity.

Whether you want to exercise and stay healthy,train professionally with like-minded people, or indulge your competitive streak, Trinity Sport and Fitness hasitcovered.We've got a dedicated support development team on campus to support every student in taking part in sports. You might want to participate in sports competitions volunteer with a local sports class or simply play for funwith our social sport program. Trinity fitness members of our public-facing sports facility will also entitleyou to discounts when you are booking a sports facility and fitness class. You will also get an opportunity to benefitfrom tailored personal training, free activities events, and lots more.

Mechanical engineering was at the heart of Taylor’s theorizing, providing the context for its development, the world view by which it was sustained and, finally, the justification for its widespread application. Scientific management aimed to analyse and control the activities of people inthesamewaythatengineers analysed and controlled machines. Central toTaylor’s system was the desire torationalizeand standardize production techniques in the interests of economy, efficiency and mutual prosperity. His primary point of interest was the individual worker pursuingindividual goals and motivated by incentive payments. UndoubtedlyTaylor’s view of human motivation was somewhat simplistic and his apprehension of the significance of groups was limited and generally negative.

But look beyond fossil fuels for the most intriguing trends. One is that the energy intensity of the world economy - the amount of energy it takes to produce one dollar’s worthof income - keeps falling, at a rate of about 2 percent. What this means is that even without any change in the relativeshares of fossil-based and fossil-free sources in the world’s energy mix, we could have 2 percent annual economic growth without increasing carbon emissions from energy use. Of course that is not enough to addressclimate change and we need more economic growth than that. It is nonethelessa stunning number, which refutes the claim by some environmentalists that permanent economic growth is fundamentally incompatible withfinite physical resources.

Many tests have shown that, in a very broad way, people in most parts of the world have similar color preferences. Blue is the most preferred and popular hue, followed in order by red, green, purple, yellow, and orange. Overlaying this basic order of color preference, however,are the responses of individuals, which of course vary widelyand may also be very powerful. Children are likely to have strong preferencesfor some colors and aversions to others, but sometimes will not admit to them, since outside factorsmay be influential in determining both color preferences and the way that they are expressed or suppressed. Current fashions in clothes and accessories, gender-stereotyping, and peer-group pressure may all play a significant part. Boys, in particular, may be reluctant to admit to any strong preferences for colors otherthanthose of favorite football teams, because color awareness may be regarded by their peer group as feminine.

No matter whether you speak English or Urdu, Waloon or Waziri, Portuguese or Persian, the roots of your language are the same. Proto-Indo-European (PIE) is the mother tongue – shared by several hundred contemporary languages, as well as many now extinct, and spoken by people who lived from about 6,000 to 3,500 BC on the steppes to the north of the Caspian Sea. They left no written texts and althoughhistorical linguists have, since the 19th century, painstakingly reconstructed the language from daughter languages, the question of how it actually sounded was assumed to be permanently out of reach. Now, researchers at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford have developed a sound-based method to move back through the family tree of languages that stem from PIE. They can simulate how certain words wouldhavesoundedwhen they were spoken 8,000 years ago. Remarkably, at the heartof the technology is the statistics of shape. “Sounds have shape,” explains Professor John Aston, from Cambridge’s Statistical Laboratory. “As a word is uttered it vibrates air, and the shape of this soundwave can be measured and turned into a series of numbers. Once we have these stats, and the stats of another spoken word, we can start asking how similar they are and what it would take to shift from one to another.”

The declinein marriage rates and increase in divorce rates has led to a decreasein the proportion of the population that is formally married. In 1986, 60% of the population aged 15 years and over were married; by 2001 this proportion had decreased to 55%. Conversely,the proportion of the population aged 15 years and over who were never married increasedfrom 29% in 1986 to 32% in 2001. At the same time, the proportion of the population who were divorced increased, from 5% in 1986 to 7% in 2001, while the proportion of the population who were widowed remained at around 6%.

People are spending twice as much time online compared to 10 years ago, fuelled by increasing use of tablets and smartphones. The biggest increasehas been among young adults, with time spent online almost tripling from 10 hours and 24 minutes each week in 2005 to 27 hours and 36 minutes in 2014. In total, the average adult spends more than 20 hours online a week, which includes time spent on the internet atwork. Meanwhilethe average person spends 2.5 hours every week “online while on the move” - away from their home, work or place of study. This is a five-fold increase from 2005, when the figure was just 30 minutes. Overall, the proportion of adults using the internet has risen by half - from six in ten in 2005 to almost nine in ten today, accordingtoOfcom’s Media Use and Attitudes 2015 report, which questioned 1,890 adults aged 16 and over about their internet consumption habits.

Gunpowder and fireworks might have been invented independently in Europe, but they probably reached Europe via the Mongols, who spread west from China as far as central Europe by the mid-13th century. In 1267, the English monk Roger Bacon recordedseeingwhat were very likely firecrackers, which he compared with the flash of lightning and growl of thunder. In 1377 fireworks accompanied a religious mystery play by the bishop's palace in Vicenza, and were soon used to add sparks to figures of doves, representing the Holy Spirit, or angels, made to ascend and descend from the heavens on ropes. By the 15th century, rockets were being used in Europe for military and peaceful purposes. Italian and Spanish cities in particular begantousefireworks for outdoor celebrations. The Italian metallurgist Vannoccio Biringuccio described festivities in Florence and Siena for feast days. These included 'girandoles' or whirling decorated wheels packed with fireworks which were suspendedfroma rope hung across a street or square. Fireworks were also used in the German lands. An elaborate colour-painted book commemoratesthe Schembart carnival of Nuremberg, which saw men dressed in brightly-coloured costumes parading through the town. Often these included some kind of pyrotechnics. One image shows a man wearing a hat in the form of a castle with fireworks and smoke shooting up from the towers, and interestingly, what looks like a smoking artichoke.

Small lakes with a surface area of less than 100 square meters represent the majority of global freshwater ecosystems. Many of these lakes arefoundin remote, often mountainous areas with no inflow and outflow. Yet in most of these lakes, there are fish. So howdo fish reach lakes and ponds that are not connected to other bodies of water? This question wasalreadyaddressed by some of the leading natural scientists of the 19th century such as Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Lyell, who all came to the same conclusion—water birds must be responsibleforfish dispersal. And they had a plausible explanation for this: fish eggs of some species are sticky and can survive for some time out of water. The theory is thus that the fish eggs stickto water birds' feathers or feet; the birds then fly from one body of water to the next, where the fish hatch from their eggs.

The supply of a thing, in the phrase "supply and demand," is the amount that will be offered for sale at each of a series of prices; the demand is the amount that will be bought at each of a series of prices. The principle that value depends on supply and demand means that in the case of nearly every commodity, more will be bought if the price is lowered, less will be bought if the price is raised.Therefore sellers, if they wish to induce buyers to take more of a commodity than they are already doing, must reduce its price; if they raise its price, they will sell less. If there is a general falling off if in demand-- due, say, to trade depression -- sellers will either have to reduceprices or put less onthe market; they will not be able to sell the same amountat the same price.

Clean water was very important to the Romans. Cities, towns and forts were built near springs. However, as Roman cities and towns grew, they needed to bring in water from furtherafield.As the population grew, sodid the need for clean water. Trying to shift large volumesof water underground in pipes was not possible as lead pipes would be too weak and bronze pipes would be too expensive. The Romans could not make cast iron pipes as the techniquesfor doing this were not known to them. If water could not be brought via pipes, the Romans decided to bring it overland in what were conduits. When the water got to the city, it was fed off into smaller bronze or ceramic pipes. To get the water to flow at an even (and slow) pace, conduits were built on a slight slope. Valleys were crossed by using aqueducts. One of the most famous of these is the Pont du Gard aqueduct at Nimes in southern France. Where possible, the Romans did take water through tunnels but the hills needed to be relatively small for this to be successful.

Kathryn Mewes does not meet bohemian, hippy parents in her line of work. Typically one, or both, of the parents she sees work in the City of London. "Professionals seek professionals," she says. Originally a nanny, Mewes is now a parenting consultant, advising couples privately on changing their child's behaviour, aswellasdoing corporate seminars for working parents. Her clients find they are unprepared for the chaos and unpredictability that having a child can entail. "Parents are getting older, they have been in control their wholelives and been successful. Suddenly a baby turns up and life turns on its head." Nicknamed the "Three-Day Nanny" becauseofher pledge to fix behavioural problems in children under the age of 12 within three days, she is filming a new Channel 4 television series demonstrating her techniques. The roleof the parenting consultant - distinct from that of a nanny - has developed, she says, as people are used to buying in expertise, such as personal trainers or, in her case, parenting advice.

Even after thousands of years exploring Earth, we're still uncovering new things like an ancient 'superhighway' in the Guatemalan rain forest. Hidden beneath a thick layer of vegetation, the networkof roads stretches over 150 miles and was most likely built by the Mayan empire some 2,000 years ago. The newly mapped roads are connected to the ruins of El Mirador (sometimes called the Kan Kingdom) in northern Guatemala. Archaeologists believe El Mirador wasfoundedaround the 6th century BCE, and was at its most powerful around the early first century CE. At that time, it had a population of as many as a quarter of a million, a quarter the size of Rome itself at the time. It also has some of the largest pyramids in the world. It was the heartof the Mayan civilization, and naturally needed some major roadways. The roads of El Mirador have been known about since 1967, but scientists had no idea how extensive they were until now. The thick jungle obscured the remnants of the road, makingit difficult to see from the air.

Affordable early years education and childcare potentially enables parents, particularly mothers, to be in paid employment. International studies havefoundthat countries with greater enrolment rates in publicly funded or provided childcare also have higher maternal employment rates, although untangling causal relationships is complex. From the point of view of the household, additional income, especially for the less well-off, is itself associated with better outcomes for children, as child poverty hasbeenshownto be a key independent determinant of children’s outcomes. From the point of view of the public purse, as mothers enteremployment they are likely to claim fewer benefits and to generate extra revenues throughincome tax and national insurance contributions.

Once an organization has its product to sell, it must then determine the appropriate price to sell it at. The price is set by balancingmany factors including supply-and-demand, cost, desired profit, competition, perceived value, and market behavior. Ultimately, the final price is determinedby what the market is willing to exchangefor the product. Pricing theory can be quite complex because so many factorsinfluence what the purchaser decides is a fair value. It also should be notedthat, in addition to monetary exchange, price can be the exchange of goods or services as in a barter agreement, or an exchange of specific behavior, such as a vote in a political campaign.

One of the Supreme Court's most important responsibilitiesis to decide cases that raise questions of constitutional interpretation. The Court decides if a law or government actionviolates the Constitution. This is known as judicial review and enables the Court to invalidate both federal and state laws when they conflictwith the Constitution. Since the Supreme Court stands as the ultimate authority in constitutional interpretation, its decisions can be changedonly by another Supreme Court decision or by a constitutional amendment.

We now know through the work of neuroscientists that the human brain is wired to mimic other people, and this mimicry involves actual involuntary physiological experiencein the observer. Human beings tend to imitateactions that they see. Physiologically, our brains include mirror neurons, which reactto actions that are seen as if we are doing the action ourselves. It is largely an unconscious and automatic experience. When we hear people speak, observe their vocal nuances,watch their posture, gestures, and facial expressions, etc, neural networks in our brains are stimulated by the “shared representations” generating feelings within us that reflectthe experience of those we are observing.

From the earliest civilisations, plants and animals have been portrayed as a means of understanding and recording the potential uses, such as their economic and healing properties. From the first illustrated catalogueof medicinal plants, De Materia Medica by Dioscorides, in the first century through to the late fourteenth century the illustration of plants and animals changed very little. Woodcuts in instructional manuals and herbals were often repeatedly copied over the centuries, resulting in a loss of definition and accuracy so that they became little more than stylized decoration. With the growing popularityof copperplate engravings, the traditional use of woodcuts declined and the representation of plants and animals became more accurate.Then, with the emergenceof artists such as Albrecht Durer and Leonardo Da Vinci, naturalists such as Otto Brunfels, Leonhard Fuchs in botany and Conrad Gesner and Ulisse Aldrovandi in zoology, nature began to be depictedin a more realistic style. Individual living plants or animals wereobserveddirectly and their likeness renderedonto paper or vellum.

As demand for food and competition for land rises, it is vital that crop losses are limited. Chemical protection has providedeffective control of crop losses in recent years. Alongside chemical fertilizers and improved crop genetics, it has helped to increase crop yields dramatically over the last six decades. However,there is now a need to develop complementary alternatives, and researchers from the Rural Economy and Land Use Program have been exploring the potential of -- and barriers to -- alternative pest management approaches. 'Alternatives to chemical pesticides are neededbecause overuse of them leads to pesticide resistance and affects biodiversity and water quality,' says Dr Alastair Bailey. 'Heightened EU regulations are also leading to the withdrawal of many pesticide products. Hence,complementary approaches are required to reduce use and preserve the efficacy of those valuable pesticides that are still available to sustain food production systems.

That Sigmund Freud became a major intellectual presence in twentieth-century culture is not in doubt. Noris there any doubt that at all times there was both fervent enthusiasm over and bitter hostility to his ideas and influence. But the exact means bywhichFreud became, despite this hostility, a master of intellectual life, on a par, already in the 1920s, with Karl Marx, Albert Einstein, Marie Curie and Bertrand Russell, has not been sufficiently explored. Strikingly, Freud emerged as a twentieth-century icon without the endorsement and support ofan institution or a profession (in contrast to Einstein, Curie and Russell). Where are we to look for the details of this story of an emergent - and new - figure of immense cultural authority? One of the principal aims of this book is to show how this happened in one local, parochial yet privileged, site - Cambridge, then as now a university town stranded in the English Fens with a relatively small fluctuatingpopulation.

People in parts of western Africa and southwestern Asia were the first to realize that the dark-silvery rocks poking out of the earth could be worked into tools and weapons, sometime around 1500 B.C., evidence shows. The metal was probably discovered there byaccident when some ore was dropped into a fire and cooled into wrought iron, historians think. The eureka moment didn't reach Europe for another500 years, traveling slowly north and west through Greece, Italy, central Europe and finally to the British Isles withthe spread of the famous Celtic tribes. The Celts diffused iron technology over much of the continent through warfare, where their victory was assured due to the strength of iron weapons. Perhaps not the most peaceful of cultural exchanges, but where the technology did travel, it caught on fast. Iron madelife a lot easier in those days, when just living to the age of 45 was a feat. By that time, much of Europe had settledinto small village life, toiling the soil with bronze and stone tools.

Cultural studies is a new way of engaging in the study of culture. In the past many academic subjects – including anthropology, history, literary studies, human geography and sociology – have brought their own disciplinary concerns to the study of culture. However, in recent decades there has been a renewed interest in the study of culture that has crossed disciplinary boundaries.The resultingactivity, cultural studies, has emerged as an intriguing and exciting area of intellectual inquiry that has already shed important new light on the character of human cultures and that promisesto continue to do so. While there is little doubt that cultural studies is coming to bewidelyrecognisedas an important and distinctive field of study, it does seem to encompass a potentially enormous area. This is because the term ‘culture’ has a complex history and range of usages, which have provided a legitimate focus of inquiry for several academic disciplines.

Overthe past two decades, around a third of the world's mangrove swamps have been convertedfor human use, with many turned into valuable shrimp farms. In 2007 an economic study of such shrimp farms in Thailand showed that the commercial profits per hectare were $9,632. If that were the only factor,conversion would seem an excellent idea. However, proper accountingshows that for each hectare government subsidies formed $8,412 of this figure and there were costs, too: $1,000 for pollution and $12,392 for losses to ecosystem services. These compriseddamage to the supply of foods and medicines that people had taken from the forest, the loss of habitats for fish, and less buffering against storms. And because a given shrimp farm only stays productivefor three or four years, there was the additional cost of restoring them afterwards.

First, the scientific community that studies climate change is quietly panic-stricken, because things are moving much faster than they expected. Greenhouse gas emissions are going up faster than predictedboth from industrialising countries in Asia and from melting permafrost in Siberia and Canada. The Arctic Sea ice is melting so fast that the whole ocean may be ice-free in late summer in five years' time. Most climate scientists now see last year's report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose forecasts are used by most governments for planning purposes, as a purelyhistorical document. Second, the biggest early impact of global warming will be on the food supply, both locally and globally. When the global average temperature hits one and a half degrees hotter - and it will, the carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere commitsus to that much warming - some countries will no longer be able to feed their people. Others, further from the equator, will still have enough food for themselves, but none to spare.

In 2005, 109,000 new marriages were registered in Australia. This was equivalent to 5.4 marriages for every 1,000 people in the population. This rate has been in overall declinesince 1986 when there were 7.2 marriages per 1,000 people. Over the same period, the crudedivorce rate has remained relatively unchanged with 2.6 divorces for every 1,000 people in 2005 and 2.5 divorces per 1,000 people in 1986. The greatestannual number of divorces occurred in 2001 when there were 55,300 divorces recorded. This peak has been followed by recent declines, with 52,400 divorces in 2005. As well as marrying less, Australians are tendingto marry later than in the past. In 1986, the median age at first marriage for men was 25.6 years, increasing to 30.0 years in 2005. For women, the median age at first marriage increased from 23.5 years in 1986 to 28.0 years in 2005.

Some students say that they need complete quiet to read and study. Others study best in a crowded, noisy room because the noise actually helpsthem concentrate. Some students like quiet music playing; others donot. The point is, you should know the level of noise that is optimal for your own studying. However, one general rule for all students is that the television seems to be more of a distraction than music or other background noise, so leavethe TV off when you are reading or studying. Also,don’t let yourself become distracted by computer games, email, or Internet surfing.

The speed of sound (otherwise known as Mach 1) varies with temperature. At sea level on a “standard day,” the temperature is 59°F, and Mach 1 is approximately 761 mph. As the altitude increases, the temperature and speed of sound bothdecrease until about 36,000 feet, after which the temperature remainssteady until about 60,000 feet. Within that 36,000–60,000 foot range, Mach 1 is about 661 mph. Because of the variation,it is possible for an airplane flying supersonic at high altitude to be slower than a subsonic flight at sea level. The transonic band (the “sound barrier”) extends fromaround Mach .8—when the first supersonic shock waves formonthe wing—to Mach 1.2, when the entire wing has gone supersonic.

Research demonstrates that facial appearance affects social perceptions. The current research investigates the reverse possibility:Can social perceptions influence facial appearance? We examine a social tag that is associated with us early in life — our given name. The hypothesis is that name stereotypes can be manifested in facial appearance, producing a face-name matching effect, wherebyboth a social perceiver and a computer are able to accurately match a person’s name to his or her face. In 8 studies we demonstrate the existenceof this effect, as participants examining an unfamiliar face accurately select the person’s true name from a list of several names, significantly above chance level. We replicate the effect in 2 countries and find that it extends beyondthe limits of socioeconomic cues. We also find the effect using a computer-based paradigm and 94,000 faces. In our exploration of the underlying mechanism, we show that existing name stereotypes produce the effect, as its occurrence is culture-dependent. A self-fulfilling prophecy seems to be at work, as initial evidence shows that facial appearance regions that are controlled by the individual (e.g., hairstyle) are sufficientto produce the effect, and socially using one’s given name is necessary to generate the effect. Together, these studies suggest that facial appearance represents social expectations of how a person with a specific name should look. In this way a social tag may influence one’s facial appearance.

Children who skip school are increasingly on family holidays, government figures revealed today. Fewerchildren played truant this spring term compared with the spring term last year. Children missed 3m unauthorized days of school last term, compared with 3.7m days of school in the same period last year. But a hardcoregroup of truants - 6% of the school population - who account for more than three-quarters of all those on unauthorized absence, are more likely to be on a family holiday than they were in the same periodlast year. Some 1.2% of all absence was for family holidays not agreedby their school last term, compared with 0.9% for the same term last year. More than 60% of all absences were for illness, the same figure as last year.

Small lakes with a surface area of less than 100 square meters represent the majority of global freshwater ecosystems. Many of these lakes arefoundin remote, often mountainous areas with no inflow and outflow. Yet in most of these lakes, there are fish. So howdo fish reach lakes and ponds that are not connected to other bodies of water? This question wasalreadyaddressed by some of the leading natural scientists of the 19th century such as Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Lyell, who all came to the same conclusion—water birds must be responsibleforfish dispersal. And they had a plausible explanation for this: fish eggs of some species are sticky and can survive for some time out of water. The theory is thus that the fish eggs stickto water birds' feathers or feet; the birds then fly from one body of water to the next, where the fish hatch from their eggs.

Coastal fish farms seem to do less harm to nearby plants and animals than previously believed, a new study reveals.And marine ecosystems can recover from this damage surprisinglyfast. But the analysis of a single trout farm in a Faroe Islands fjord over nearly a year also shows that these facilities need to be placedcarefully, and that there’s a limit to how many can operatein a particular area before its biodiversity suffers lasting harm. In coastal farms, fish live in large cages hanging from pontoons on the surface. Fish feces and uneaten food sink to the seabed, affecting its ecosystem. Badly-managed farms can also have serious effectson the surrounding water column.

In these distant times the sun was seen to make its daily journeyacross the sky. At night the moon appeared. Every new night the moon waxed or waned a little and on a few nights it did not appear at all. At night the great dome of the heavens was dotted with tiny specks of light. They becameknown as the stars. It was thought that every star in the heavens had its own purpose and that the secretsof the universe could be discovered by making a study of them. It was well known that there were wandering stars, they appeared in different nightly positions against their neighbours and they became known as planets. It took centuries, in fact it took millennia, for man to determinethe true nature of these wandering stars and to evolve a model of the world to accommodate them and to predicttheir positions in the sky.

A renewed interest in well-being, especially among baby boomers, as well as rising personal incomes, led to more spending on health and fitness in 2005. This prompted an expansionin the number of fitness and recreation centres across the country. Golf courses also enjoyedrenewed success, as the sport increased in popularity, possibly the result of retiring baby boomers heading to the links. In 2005, householdsspent an average $3,918 on recreation, up slightly from $3,678 in 2004. Items included in the 2005 figure are: an average $166 on sports and athletic equipment; $665 to buy and operaterecreational vehicles such as snowmobiles, bicycles and trailers; and $299 for the use of sports and recreation facilities.

Cells are now acceptableas a unifying concept. A cell is the smallest unitof structure and function. Thus, cells are the basic building blocks of all organisms. Cells vary in size. With few exceptions, individual cells are sosmall that they cannot be seen unaided. In 1665, a British scientist named Robert Hooke observed cells for the firsttime using a microscope. A microscope is an instrument that magnifies an object. Most images of cells are taken with a microscope and are called micrographs.

Over the past two decades around a third of the world’s mangrove swamps have been convertedfor human use, with many turned into valuable shrimp farms. In 2007 an economic study of such shrimp farms in Thailand showed that the commercial profits per hectare were $9,632. If that were the only factor,conversion would seem an excellent idea. However, proper accountingshows that for each hectare government subsidies formed $8,412 of this figure and there were costs, too: $1,000 for pollution and $12,392 for losses to ecosystem services. These compriseddamage to the supply of foods and medicines that people had taken from the forest, the loss of habitats for fish, and less buffering against storms. And because a given shrimp farm only stays productivefor three or four years, there was the additional cost of restoring them afterwards: if you do so with mangroves themselves, add another $9,318 per hectare. The overall lesson is that what looks beneficialonly does so because the profits are retained by the private sector, while the problems are spread out across society at large, appearing on no specific balance sheet.

France was still essentially a feudal nation with lords, due to a range of ancient and modern rights from their peasants who comprised about 80 percent of the population and the majority lived in rural contexts. France was a predominantly agricultural nation, even though this agriculture was low in productivity, wasteful, and using out of date methods. An attempt to introduce modern techniques from Britain had not succeeded. Inheritance laws, wherebyestates were divided up among all the heirs, had leftFrance divided into many tiny farms; eventhe large estates were small when compared to other European nations. The only major region oflarge-scale farming was around Paris, where the always hungry capital city provided a convenient market. Harvests were critical but fluctuating, causing famine, high prices, and riots.

Dance has played an important role in many musicals. In some cases,dance numbers are included as an excuse to add to the color and spectacle of the show, but dance is more effective when it forms an integral part of the plot.An early example is Richard Rodgers On Your Toes (1936) in which the story about classical ballet meeting the world of jazz enabled dance to be introduced in a way that enhances,rather than interrupts the drama.

Bhutan is the last standing Buddhist Kingdom in the World and, until recently, has preservedmuch of their culture since the 17th century by avoiding globalization and staying isolated from the world Internet, television, and western dress were banned from the country up until ten years ago. But over the past ten years globalization has begun to change in Bhutan, but things remain perfectlybalanced.Bhutan is the only country in the world that has a 'GNH.' You may think GNH is just another statisticallybased term with no real-life application, but it refers to "Gross National Happiness." The process of measuring GNH began when Bhutan opened to globalization. It measures people's quality of life, and makes sure that "material and spiritual development happen together." Bhutan has done an amazing Job of finding this balance. Bhutan has continually been (ranked) as the happiest country in all of Asia, and the eighth Happiest Country in the world according to Business Week. In 2007 Bhutan had the second fastest growing GDP in the world, at the same time as maintainingtheir environment and cultural identity.Bhutan is the only Buddhist Kingdom in the world; Mahayana Buddhism is the official religion of Bhutan. Over two thirds of the people are Buddhist, and Buddhism is supported by the government both politically and economically. The government gives subsidiesto Buddhist monasteries, shrines, monks and other Buddhist programs.

Bhutan used to be one of the most isolated nations in the world. Developments including direct international flights, the Internet, mobile phone networks, and cable television have increasinglymodernized the urban areas of the country. Bhutan has balancedmodernization with its ancient culture and traditions under the guiding philosophy of Gross National Happiness (GNH). Rampant destructionof the environment has been avoided. The government takes great measuresto preserve the nation's traditional culture, identity and the environment. In 2006, Business Week magazine rated Bhutan the happiest country in Asia and the eighth- happiest in the world, citinga global survey conducted by the University of Leicester in 2006 called the "World Map of Happiness".

There has been a great variety of critical approach to Shakespeare's work since his death. During the 17th and18th centuries, Shakespeare was both admired and condemned. Since then, much of the adverse criticism hasnotbeenconsidered relevant, although certain issues have continued to interest critics throughout the years. For instance, charges against his moral propriety were made by Samuel Johnson in the 18th century and by George Bernard Shaw in the 20th. Early criticism was directed primarilyat questions of form. Shakespeare was criticized for mixing comedy and tragedy and failing to observe the unities of time and place prescribedby the rules of classical drama. Dryden and Johnson were among the critics claiming that he had corruptedthe language with false wit, puns, and ambiguity. Whilesome of his early plays might justly be charged with a frivolous use of such devices, 20th-century criticism has tended to praise their use in later plays as adding depth and resonance of meaning.

What killed off the dinosaurs? The end of the Cretaceous Period saw one of the most dramatic mass extinctions the Earth has ever seen. The fossil record shows that throughout their 160-million-year existence,dinosaurs took on a huge variety of forms as the environment changed and new species evolved that were suited to these new conditions. Others that failed to adapt wentextinct. But then 66 million years ago, over a relatively short time, dinosaurs disappeared completely(except for birds). Many other animals also died out, including pterosaurs, large marine reptiles, and other sea creatures such as ammonites. Althoughthe number of dinosaur species was already declining, this suggests a sudden catastrophic event sealed their fate, causing unfavorable changes to the environment more quickly than dinosaurs and other creatures could adapt. The exact nature of this catastrophic event is still opento scientific debate. The catastrophe could have been an asteroid impact, volcanic eruptions or the effect of both, together with more gradualchanges in the Earth's climate over millions of years. Whatever the causes, the huge extinction that ended the age of the dinosaur left gaps in the ecosystem that were subsequently filled by mammals and birds, allowing them to evolve rapidly.

Since the beginning of the financial crisis, there have been two principal explanationsfor why so many banks made such disastrous decisions. The first is structural. Regulators did not regulate. Institutions failed to functionas they should. Rules and guidelines were either inadequate or ignored. The second explanation is that Wall Street was incompetent,that the traders and investors didn't know enough, that they made extravagant bets without understandingthe consequences.

Many people today think of culture in the way that it was thought of in Europe during the 18th and early 19th centuries. This conceptof culture reflected inequalities within European societies and their colonies around the world. This understanding of culture equates culture with civilization and contrasts both with nature or non- civilization. According to this understanding of culture, some countries are more civilized than others, and some people are more cultured than others. Anything that doesn’t fitinto this category is labeled as chaos or anarchy. From this perspective, culture is closely tied to cultivation, which is the progressive refinement of human behavior.Inpractice, culture referred to elite goods and activities such as haute cuisine, high fashion or haute couture, museum-caliber art and classical music. The word cultured referred to people who knew about and took part in these activities. For example, someone who used culture in this sense might arguethat classical music is more refined than music by working-class people, such as jazz or the indigenous music traditions of aboriginal peoples.

One of the characteristics of 'good' information identified earlier was that it should be 'balanced'. In an ideal world, ' objective' or 'balanced' information would present all the evidencefor and against, and leave you to weigh this up and draw conclusions. In the real world, however, we recognize that all information presents a position of interest,although this may not necessarily be intentional. Objectivity may therefore be an unachievable ideal. This means that the onus is on you as the reader and user of the information to developa critical awareness of the positions represented in what you read, and to take account of this when you interpret the information. In some cases, authors may explicitly express a particular viewpoint — this is perfectly valid as long as they are open about the perspective they represent. Hidden bias, whether or not it is deliberate,can be misleading. This could be particularly important in a subject area where there is controversy.

If you are interested in studying but have other commitments,our online and distance learning courses offer an alternative flexible modeof study. Teaching is conducted through a mixture of audio-visual, written and interactive materials. There are also opportunitiesfor online discussion and collaborative projects with tutors and other students. Some programs include residential modulestaught on campus, giving you the chance to meet and work alongside your tutors and fellow students face-to-face. Our Graduate School provides comprehensive support for distance and part-time researchers, many of whom study for up to six years or more.

Modern technology has enhanced the study of language by making its sounds observable in greater detail and with greater accuracy than ever before, but the thoughts associated with those sounds remain problematic. Currently developing techniquesof brain imaging are allowing us to observe for the first-time which parts of the brain are active in different circumstances. They do not, however, show experiences themselves, which may always remain hiddenfrom public observation. There is a sense in which each of us knows what we are thinking, althoughwe may not always have a good way of verbalizing it. But the only way we can know what someone else is thinking is through what that person says, or through some other overt action a facialexpressionor gesture, perhaps from which that person's thoughts may be inferred, or from imagining what we ourselves would be thinking insimilar circumstances.

The wrist watch works by trackinginformation such as a person's pulse or movement. When it detectsa change in a person's health, the watch sends information to a touchscreen hub locatedin the home. The hub then alertspre-determined contacts and calls for help immediately.

In the UK, it is recommended that drivers should turn off their car engines when they expect to be stationary for more than 1 minute. To encourage drivers to turn off their engineswhile waiting at rail crossings, the Kent city council placed a permanent sign at the crossing asking drivers to "please switch off your engine when barriers are down to help improve air quality." Onaverage,drivers had to wait between 2 and 3 minutes to cross after the barrier had gone down. However, the sign didn't seem to be convincing themajorityofdrivers to switch off their engines. "Although some research suggests that signs alone can change behaviour, the message on this sign was designed simply to be an informational request and was not guided by any particular behavioural theory," the researchers explain. So the researchteam, led by Rose Mellady of the University of East Anglia, designed an intervention study.

Giant exoplanets, like the so-called 'hot Jupiters' that are similar in characteristicsto the solar system's biggest planetand orbit very close to their host stars, are excellent targets for astronomersin their search for their extrasolar worlds. The size and proximity of these planets is easy to detectas they create a large decrease in brightness when passing in front of their parent stars.

Managing performance is about getting people into action so that they achieve planned and agreed results. It focuses on what has to be done, how it should be done and what isto be achieved. But it is equally concerned with developingpeople - helping them to learn - and providing them with the support they need to do well, now and in the future. The framework for performance management is provided by the performance agreement, whichis the outcome of performance planning. The agreement provides the basis for managing performance throughout the year and for guidingimprovement and development activities. It is used as a reference point whenreviewing performance and the achievement of improvement and development plans

Throughout the 18th century, mathematicians, scientists and philosophers researched, discussed, and published their investigations into how the world worked, while engineers and inventors developed new and successful machines and processes. The latesttheories inspired greater invention, and more technology encouraged theoretical scientists to make further discoveries in medicine, biology, mechanics, physics, and chemistry. By 1800, the new machines hadbrought revolutionary changes to the workplace, transportation and communications, and eventually to the home. Some of these inventions simply made it easier to produce things on a large scale such as textile machines and foundries, whichproduced large quantities of cloth and metal objects quickly and cheaply. But some inventions broughtcompletely new possibilities such as the first batteries, steamboats, and locomotives. It would take decades for some of these inventions tomakea big impact on the world. Yettheir creation, and the sheer amount of imagination and risk-taking involved,marked the beginning of a modern, global, technologically based economy of the kind that we live in today.

The international journal of design is a peer-reviewed, open access journal devoted to publishing research papers in all fields of design, including industrial design, visual communication design, interface design, animation and game design, architectural design, urban design, and other design related fields. It aims to provide an international forum for the exchangeof ideas and findings from researchers across different cultures and encourages research on the impact of cultural factors ondesign theory and practice. It also seeks to promote the transferof knowledge between professionals in academia and industry by emphasizing research in whichresults are of interest or applicable to design practices.

Participating regularly in physical activity has been shown to benefit an individual's health and well-being.Regular physical activity is important in reducing the risk of chronicdiseases, such as heart disease and stroke, obesity, diabetes and some forms of cancer. The National Physical Activity Guidelines for Adults recommendat least 30 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity, preferablyevery day of the week, to obtainhealth benefits.

Psychology as a subject of study has largely developed in the West since the late nineteenth century. During this period there has been an emphasison scientific thinking. Because of this, there have been many scientific studies in psychology which exploredifferent aspects of human nature. These include studies into how biology (physical factors) influences human experience, how people use their senses(touch, taste, smell, sight and hearing) to get to know the world, how people develop, why people behave in certain ways, how memory works, how people develop language, how people understand and think about the world, what motivates people, why people have emotions and how personality develops. These scientific investigationsall contribute to an understanding of human nature. What do we mean by the practical applications of these studies? An understandingof psychology is useful in many different areas in life, such as education, the workplace, social services and medicine. This means that people who have knowledge of psychology can useor apply that knowledge in areas such as the ones listed above.

The prospect of learning something from history is what makes sociologists tick. It is through developinga systematic understanding of the forces which shape our lives that we canexercise control over them. The founding thinkers of sociology, who cameto prominence during the development of what we are pleased to call modernity, thought so. It Is the intimate relationship between the development of sociology and the development of modernity that the course begins with. This relationship is an intimate one, because it is onlywith the social change instituted in the development of the modern world that a discipline such as sociology and social science in general could either exist or have anything to study.

The heart functions as a pump at the centre of the circulatory system. In humans it is located in the chest cavity, between the lungs, abitto the left. The heart consists of four chambers surrounded by a very strong muscular wall, the myocardium. The upper chambers, the right and left atria, receiveblood entering the heart, and the lower chambers, the right and left ventricles pump the blood out of the heart, via the pulmonary and the systemic circulatory systems. The two systems work as follows.Blood from the body enters the right atrium, ispassed into the right ventricle and from there is propelled through the pulmonary artery to the lungs. In the lungs the blood releases carbon dioxide and absorbs oxygen and is then transportedback to the heart into the left atrium. From here it passes into the left ventricle, which pumps the oxygenated blood around the body.

Team Lab's digital mural at the entrance to Tokyo’s Skytree, one of the world’s monster skyscrapers, is 40 metres long and immensely detailed. But howevermassive this form of digital art becomes -and it's a form subjecttorampant inflation--Inoko's theories about seeing are based on more modest and often pre-digital sources. An early devotee of comic books and cartoons (no surprises there), then computer games, he recognised when he started to look at traditional Japanese art that all those forms had something incommon:something about the way they captured space. In his discipline of physics, Inoko had been taught that photographic lenses, alongwiththe conventions of western art, were the logical way of transforming three dimensions into two, conveying the real world onto a flat surface. ButJapanese traditions employed “a different spatial logic”,as he said in an interview last year with j-collabo.org, that is “uniquely Japanese”.

Emerging in the mid 1950s in Britain and late 1950s in America, pop art reached its peak in the 1960s. It began as a revolt againstthe dominant approaches to art and culture and traditional views on what art shouldbe.Young artists felt that what they were taught at art school and what they saw in museums did not have anything todowiththeir lives or the things they saw around them every day. Instead they turnedtosources such as Hollywood movies, advertising, product packaging, pop music and comic books for their imagery.

At the moment, there are between six and seven thousand languages in the world. According to linguists, fifty percent of these are in danger ofbecomingextinct. The speed of language loss has accelerated over the past few decades because businesses that need to communicate with a range of people from other cultures preferto employ more widely used languages, such as English, Chinese, or Spanish. This attitude is understandable, but it means that many local languages are dying out before anyone hashadthe opportunity to study them. According to linguists, some of these languages could reveal a great dealof useful information about language learning and cognitive development. In addition, a local language that has been built on the local culture contains words and phrases that express that culture; lose the language and you arguably may lose the culture, too. And finally, historians will arguethat a language contains evidence of a region's history and should, for that reason alone, be preserved.

Twenty years ago, not so long before B-15 broke off from Antarctica, 'we didn't even know that icebergs made noise,' says Haru Matsumoto, an ocean engineer at NOAA who has studied these sounds. But in the past fewyears, scientists have started to learn to distinguish the eerie, haunting sounds of iceberg life — ice cracking, icebergs grinding againsteach other, an iceberg grounding on the seafloor — and measure the extent to whichthose sounds contribute to the noise of the ocean. While they're just now learning to listen, the sounds of ice could help them understand the behavior and breakup of icebergs and ice shelves as the poles warm up.

Genius, in the popular conception, is inextricably tied up with precocity-doing something truly creative, we're inclined to think, requires the freshness and exuberance and energy of youth. Orson Welles made his masterpiece, "Citizen Kane," at twenty-five. Herman Melville wrote a book a year throughhis late twenties, culminating, at age thirty-two, with "Moby-Dick." Mozart wrote his breakthrough Piano Concerto No. 9 in E- Flat-Major at the ageof twenty-one. In some creative forms, like lyric poetry, the importanceof precocity has hardened into an iron law. How old was T. S. Eliot when he wrote "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" ("I grow old . . . I grow old")? Twenty-three. "Poets peak young," the creativityresearcher James Kaufman maintains. Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, the author of "Flow," agrees: "The most creative lyric verse is believed to be that written by the young." According to the Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner, a leading authority on creativity, "Lyric poetry is a domainwhere talentis discovered early, burns brightly, and then peters out at an early age."

Academic writing addresses complex issues that require high-order thinking skills to comprehend (e.g., critical reflective logical and creative thinking). Think of your writing thisway: one of the most important attributes of a good teacher is the ability to explain complex ideas in a way that is understandable and relatable to the topic being presented.This is also one of the main functions of academic writing - describing and explaining the significance of complex ideas as clearly as possible. Often referredto as higher-order thinking skills, these include cognitive processes that are used to comprehend solve problems and express concepts or that describe abstract ideas that cannot be easily acted out pointed to or shown with images. As a writer you must take onthe role of a good teacher by summarizing a lot of complex information into a well-organized synthesis of ideas concepts and recommendations that contributeto a better understanding of the research problem.

To better understand selfies and how people form their identities online, the researchers combed through 2.5 million selfie posts on Instagram to determine what kinds of identity statements people make by taking and sharing the photos.Nearly 52 percent of all selfies fellintothe appearance category: pictures of people showing off their make-up, clothes, lips, etc. Pics about looks were two times more popular than the other 14 categories combined.After appearances, social selfies with friends, loved ones, and pets were the most common (14 percent). Then came ethnicity pics (13 percent), travel (7 percent), and health and fitness (5 percent). The researchers noted that the prevalence of ethnicity selfies (selfies about a person’s ethnicity, nationality or country of origin) is an indication that people are proud of their backgrounds. They also found that most selfies are solo pictures, ratherthan taken with a group.Overall, an overwhelming 57 percent of selfies on Instagram were posted by the 18-35-year-old crowd, something the researchers say isn’t too surprising consideringthe demographics of the social media platform. The under-18 age group posted about 30 percent of selfies. The older crowd (35+) shared them far less frequently (13 percent). Appearance was most popular among all age groups.Lead author Julia Deeb-Swihart says selfies are an identity performance—meaning that users carefully craft the way they appear online and that selfies are an extension of that. This evokes William Shakespeare’s famous line: “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.”

Your teenage daughter gets top marks in school, captains the debate team, and volunteers at a shelter for homeless people. But while driving the family car, she text-messages her best friend and rear-ends another vehicle. How can teens be so clever, accomplished, and responsible-and reckless atthesametime?Easily, according to two physicians at Children's Hospital Boston and Harvard Medical School (HMS) who have been exploringthe uniquestructure and chemistry of the adolescentbrain. "The teenage brain is not just an adult brain with fewer miles on it," says Frances E. Jensen, a professor of neurology. "It's a paradoxical time of development.These are people with very sharpbrains, but they're not quite sure what to do with them."

Spanish is spoken by more than 300 million people in over 20 countries and is rapidly becoming one of the most popular choicesfor language learners around the world. A popular course for beginners, Suenos World Spanish is designed to meetthe varied needs of adult learners, whetherlearning at home or in a class. From the very beginning it encourages you to develop your listening and speaking skills with confidence and providesmany opportunities to practice reading in Spanish. Using the extensive rangeof media available, from the course book to the audio CDs or cassettes, to the popular accompanying television series and free online activities,Suenos World Spanish can help you reach the equivalent level of a first qualification, such as GCSE.

People are living longer and this longevity is good news for sales teams. It results in a much more precisecustomer base for them to work from. Why we are living longer is not the issue for anyone involvedin drawing up plans to market a product. What they focus on is the fact that there are now more age groups to target, which means that a sales pitch can be re-worked a number of times to more exactly fit each one. For example, ratherthanreferring simply to 'adults', there are now 'starting adults', 'young adults' and 'established adults'. Similarly,markets no longer talk about 'children', but tend to refer to a fuller range of categories that includes 'kids', 'tweens', 'pre-teens' and 'teenagers'. We now have a very diverse population in terms of age, and that can only be a bonusforbusiness.

It would be reassuring to think that the electoratechoose who to vote for based on the candidates' track records and future policy promises. Intruth,many of us are swayed simply by the way that politicians look. Consider a 2009 study that asked Swiss students to look at multiple pairs of unfamiliar French political candidates and in each case to select the one who looked most competent. Most of the time, the candidate selected by students aslooking the most competent was also the one who'd had real life electoral success, the implicationbeingthat voters too had been swayed by the candidates' appearance (there’s little evidence that appearance and competence actually correlate).Unsurprisingly,being attractive also helps win votes, especially in war time (in peacetime, looking trustworthy is more of an advantage). Other research has shown that was more likely to vote for male and female candidates with deeper voices.

Clown fish became famous thanks to the movie Finding Nemo. In real life, their social hierarchy is simple: larger fish dominate their smaller counterparts.Now we know that to reinforce this social structure, the fish communicate with aggressive and submissive audio signals. The new info is in the journal PLoS ONE. Researchers recordedclown fish calls, capturingthis noise as one chased a smaller fish. These popping sounds function as an aggression signal. When a clown fish has been chased and wishes to submit, it shakes its head in a submissive gesture and produces clicking noises like these. The researchers comparedthe aggressive and submissive calls, and found that the sound pulses in a submissive signal were shorter and more high-pitched. Unlike many animals that use sound to draw in potentialmates, clown fish appear to use their calls only as labels of social status. When a little fish makes submissive sounds to a larger one, neither has to invest in a physical confrontation. Which is good news for small-fry like Nemo.

The discovery of a set of what look like ancient hominin footprints on the island of Crete could throw our understanding of human evolution into disarray. Received wisdom is that after splittingfrom the chimp lineage, our hominin ancestors were confined to Africa until around 1.5 million years ago. The prints found in Crete, however, belongedto a creature that appears to have lived 5.7 million years ago — suggesting a more complex story. More research is needed to confirm what kind of animal made them. However, the prints seem to have been madeby a creature that walked upright, on the soles of clawless feet (rather than on its toes), with a big toe positioned like our own, rather than sticking out sideways like an ape's. It may yet turn out to have been a previouslyunknown non-hominin that had evolved with a human-like foot; but the explanatory paper, in the Proceedings of the Geologists' Association, is not the first to suggest that hominins could have originated in Europe. A few months ago, a team put forward evidence, gleaned from fossils found in Greece and Bulgaria that a 7.2 million-year old ape known as Graecopithecus was in fact a hominin.

Gauss was a child prodigy. There are many anecdotesconcerning his precocity as a child, and he made his first ground-breaking mathematical discoverieswhile still a teenager. At just three years old, he correctedan error in his father's payroll calculations, and he was looking after his father's accounts on a regular basis by the age of 5. At the age of 7, he is reported to have amazed his teachers by summing the integers from 1 to 100 almost instantly (having quickly spotted that the sum was actually 50 pairs of numbers, with each pair summing to 101, total 5,050). By the age of 12, he was already attending gymnasium and criticizing Euclid's geometry.

London's National Portrait Gallery is currently celebrating the fifty-year careerof photographer Sandra Lousada. The twenty one portraits on displaydepict key figuresin literature, film and fashion from the early 1960s. Subsequentto the acquisition of forty portraits by Lousada, the display at the National Portrait Gallery highlights shots taken between 1960 and 1964, many of which featurein Lousada's book Public Faces Private Places(2008). Formal commissioned portraits are shown alongside behind-the-scenes photographs taken on film setsand unguarded portraits of sitters captured at home.

Some of the most basic organisms are smarter than we thought. Rather than moving about randomly, amoebas and plankton employ sophisticated strategiesto look for food and might travel in a way that optimizestheir foraging. Biophysicists have long tried to explain how creatures of all sizes search for food. However, single-celled organisms such as bacteria seem to move in no particular directionin their search.To investigate, Liang Li and Edward Cox at Princeton University studied the movements of amoebas (Dictyostelium) in a Petri dish, recording the paths travelled by 12 amoebas, including every turn and movement straight ahead, for 8 to 10 hours per amoeba.Immediately after an amoeba turned right, it was twice as likelyto turn left as right again, and vice versa, they told a meeting of the American Physical Society meeting in Denver, Colorado, last week. This suggests that the cells have a rudimentarymemory, being able to remember the last direction they had just turned in, says Robert Austin, a biophysicist at Princeton who was not involved in the study.

An analysis of more than 500 graduates found no significant difference between business schools that offered traditional courses and those that emphasise a 'learning-by-doing' approach to entrepreneurship education. The research challenges the ongoing trend across higher education institutes (HEIs) of focusingon experiential learning, and suggests that universities need to reconsider their approach if they aretoincrease entrepreneurship among their students. Ms Inna Kozlinska, research associate at Aston Business School and author of the study, said: 'Entrepreneurship education isseenas a major force capable of generating long- term socio-economic changes through developing entrepreneurial, creative, flexible and wise individuals. There is an ongoing shift towards experiential learning in business schools, yetthere is little empirical evidence to suggest this approach has better impact than traditional learning.'

Students at the University of Leicester have recently whizzed up a storm of eco-friendly smoothies. This comes as part of a week of events aimed at promoting environmental initiatives oncampus. A range of events and activities were organized by the University Environment Team and the Students Union to encourage students to waste less, recycle more,travel sustainably and save energy to contribute to the University's target of cutting its carbon footprint by60% by the year 2020. The highlight of the week was a cycle-powered smoothie maker. Students rescued fruit from Leicester market which would otherwisehave been thrown away and salvaged it to create delicious smoothies. Noelectricity was used as the fruit was whizzed up in a blender attached to the back of a bike pedaled by enthusiastic student volunteers.

In 1868, botanist Jules-émile Planchon unmaskedthe culprit behind a national crisis. For five years, a blighthad been stealing across France’s vineyards. Its cause was invisible, its spread inexorable.Always it followed the same pattern. First a single vine would wither,thena circle of plants. Entire vineyards were wiped out within years.

Turning now to the heart of the study, in two divisions an attempt wasmadeto change the supervision so that the decision levels were pusheddownand detailed supervision of the workers reduced. More general supervision of the clerks and their supervisors was introduced. In addition, the managers, assistant managers, supervisors and assistant supervisors of these two divisions were trainedin group methods of leadership, which they endeavoredto use as much as their skill would permit during the experimental year. For easy reference, the experimental changes in these two divisions willbelabelledthe ‘participative program’!

One thing is certain. Most people do not get enough exercise in their dailyroutines. All of the advances of modern technology - from electriccan openers to power steering - have made life easier, more comfortable and muchless physically demanding.Yet our bodies need activity, especially if they are carrying around too much fat. Satisfying this need requires a definite plan, and a commitment.

The emperor is the giant of the penguin world and the most iconic of the birds of Antarctica. Gold patches on their ears and on the top of their chest brightenuptheir black heads. Emperors and their closest relative, the king penguin, have unique breeding cycles, with very long chick-rearing periods. The emperor penguins breed the furthest south of any penguin species, forming large colonies on the sea-ice surrounding the Antarctic continent. They are true Antarctic birds, rarely seenin the subantarctic waters. So that the chicks can fledge in the late summer season, emperors breed during the cold, dark winter, with temperatures as low at - 50°C and winds upto 200 km per hour. They trek 50–120 km (30–75 mls) over the ice to breeding colonies which may include thousands of individuals. The female lays a single egg in May then passes it over to her mate to incubate whilstshe goes to sea to feed. For nine weeks the male fasts, losing 45% of his body weight. The male balances the egg on his feet, which are coveredin a thick roll of skin and feathers. The egg can be 70°C warmer than the outside temperature.

Freud's psychosexual theory, leaving questions about its validity, is necessary to be tested scientifically. However,he never did experiments. Another concern is that the theory is based on case studies versus research. Some have issues with Freud's theory being focused more on male psychosexual development, offeringvery little insight into females. It also refers to homosexual preferences as a deviation of normal psychosexual development, though many psychologists today feel that sexual orientation is more biological in nature and Freud's theory is one-sided.

Governments also frequently subsidize local industries to help them compete in the global market. Subsidies come intheformoftax credits or direct payments. The most commonly used are farm subsidies. That allows producers to lower the price of local goods and services. This makes the products cheaper even when shipped overseas. Subsidies work even better than tariffs. This method works best for countries that rely mainly on exports. But sometimes subsidies can have the opposite effect. The Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 allowedthe government to pay farmers notto grow crops or livestock. The government wanted to control supply and increase prices. Farmers could also let their fields rest and regain nutrients due to overproduction. It helped the agriculture industry but raisedfood costs during the Depression.

The amount of sleep you need depends on many factors,especially your age. Newborns sleep between 16 and 18 hours a day and preschool children should sleep between 10 and 12 hours. Older children and teens need at least nine hours to be well-rested. For most adults, seven to eight hours a night appears to the best amount of sleep. However, for some people" enough sleep" may be as few as five hours or as many as 10 hours of sleep. As you get older, your sleeping patternschange. Older adults tend to sleep more lightly and awaken more frequently in the night than younger adults. This can have many causes including medical conditions and medications used to treat them. But there’s no evidence that older adults need less sleep than younger adults. Getting enough sleep is importantto your health because it boosts your immunesystem, which makes your body better able to fight disease. Sleep is necessary for your nervous system to work properly. Too little sleep makes you drowsy and unable to concentrate. It also impairs memory and physical performance. So how many hours of sleep are enough for You? Experts say that if you feel drowsy during the day — even during boring activities - you are not getting enough sleep. Also, the quality of sleep is just as important as quantity. People whose sleep is frequently interrupted or cut short are not getting quality sleep. If you experience frequent daytime sleepiness, even after increasing the amount of quality sleep you get, talk to your doctor. He or she may be able to identifythe cause of sleep problems and offer advice on how to get a better night’s sleep.

When it comes to elections,sometimes we vote with our heads and sometimes with our hearts. But scientists at Stanfordsay we might also be voting with our pompoms. Because they've found that our behavior at the polls is influenced by the results of local sportingevents, work published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Humans are emotional creatures.And our strong feelings about one thing can spread to another. So the Stanford scientists wondered whether events that are unrelated to government performance might sway the way people feel about their elected officials. And what could be less relevantto the workings in Washington or your state capital than college football? The researchers looked at the election results from 20 years' worth of presidential,senatorial and gubernatorial races. And they found that a home-teamwin before the election gave the incumbent a boost of almost two percentage points. The more beloved the team, the bigger the bounce. And it's not just football. In a separate survey, the scientists found that NCAA college basketball results affected presidential approval ratings. So next election day, you might think about practicing a little separation of stadium and state.

Since Austria sits at a high elevation and spends a quarter of the year under snow,it should come as no surprise that heating is a matter of considerable importance in the country.What may be surprising, however, is that Vienna—a grand imperial city of music, art, and history—actually boasts a museum dedicatedspecifically to heating systems.

Understanding the number of species we have in our marine environment is a basicneed if we are to protect and conserve our biodiversity. This is vitalin today's rapidly changing world, not just here in Hong Kong, but especiallyin Southeast Asia which holds the world's most diverse marine habitats. SWIMS is playing a major role in trying to measure and conserve these important resources, both within Hong Kong but also, together with its regional collaborators, in Southeast Asia." said Professor Gray A. Williams, the leader of this study and the Director of HKU SWIMS. The enormous arrayof marine life in Hong Kong, however, has yet to receive its desirable level of conservation as currently only less than 2% of Hong Kong's marine area is protected as marine parks or reserve as compared with approximately 40 % of our terrestrial area. The Government has committed to designate more new marine parks in the coming years. The Brothers Marine Park in the northern Lantau waters will be launched soon, which will bring Hong Kong's total protected marine area to more than 2%. The research team welcomed the initiative of the new marine park whilealso urging the Hong Kong government to move towards the global target of at least 10% marine protected area by the year 2020 under United Nation's Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

The writer-or, for that matter, the speaker conceives his thought whole, as a unity, but must express it in a line of words; the reader- or listener-must take this line of symbols and from it reconstructthe original wholeness of thought. There is littledifficulty in conversation, because the listener receives innumerable cues from the physical expressions of the speaker; there is a dialogue, and the listener can cutat any time. The advantage of group discussion is that people can overcome linear sequence of words by convergingon ideas from different directions; which makes for wholeness of thought. But the reader is confronted by line upon line of printed symbols, without benefits of physical toneand emphasis or the possibility of dialogue or discussion.

Victorians were avid readers. Just as we bury our faces in our mobile devices on the morning commute, sotoodid Victorians with the latest penny fiction. Towards the latter half of the 19th century, gas and electric lighting also meantthatreading after dark didn’t have to be by candlelight or messy oil lamps. Perhaps the best know serialized novels were the "Penny Dreadfuls". Costingjust one old penny, they focused on the exploits of detectives, criminals, or supernatural entities. The price of new books-often only available as a set of three- was out of reach for most working-class people, so they borrowed from circulating libraries suchasMudie's (founded 1842), which dispatched books all over Britain for a modest subscription fee. For the wealthier classes who couldaffordfirst editions, reading from their own collection would be an everyday occurrence.

The transitions which occurred in Britain around 100 BC, and after 43 AD (when the Roman Army invadedBritain) represent the key points of socio-economic trend in Britain's past. During the first century BC, the traditional communal form of life shiftedrapidly to a world where certain individuals becamemore important. During the first century AD, Britain became fully a part of the Roman Empire.

Australia and New Zealand have many common links. Both countries were recently settled by Europeans, are predominantly English speaking and in that sense, share a common cultural heritage. Although in close proximity to one another, both countries are geographically isolated and have small populations by world standards.They have similar histories and enjoy close relations on many fronts. In terms of population characteristics,Australia and New Zealand have much in common. Both countries have minority indigenous populations, and during the latter half of the 20th century have seen a steady stream of migrants from a variety of regions throughout the world. Both countries have experiencedsimilar declines in fertility since the high levels recorded during the baby boom, and alongside this have enjoyed the benefits of continually improving life expectancy. One consequence of these trends is that both countries are faced with an ageing population, and the associatedchallenge of providing appropriate care and support for this growing group within the community.

Durkheim found humanistic studies uninteresting, turning his attentionfrom psychology and philosophy to ethics and eventually, sociology. He graduated with a degree in philosophy in 1882. Durkheim's views could not get him a major academic appointment in Paris, so from 1882 to 1887 he taught philosophy at several provincial schools. In 1885 he leftforGermany, where he studied sociology for two years. Durkheim' s period in Germany resultedinthe publication of numerous articles on German social science and philosophy, which gainedrecognitionin France, earning him a teaching appointment at the University of Bordeaux in 1887.

The king had commissioned the crafting of a crown as a tribute to the gods. He gave a carefully weighed amount of gold to a smith, who produced a beautiful crown within due course. The king became suspicious, however, thatthe craftsman had not used all of the gold he had been given in the crown. It was a common trick to alloy gold with cheaper silver, but the King knew no way of proving that the craftsman had been dishonest. He called upon his close friend Archimedes to solve the problem. Archimedes knew that gold and silver have different densities, meaningthat a lump of gold will weigh about twice as much as a lump of silver the same size. The trouble was that no one knew how to work out the size of an irregularly shaped object like a crown. Whilst he was pondering this conundrum, Archimedes went to the public baths to relax. As he slipped into the water he noticed some spilling over the edge, and he had a sudden flash of inspiration. The displacedwater must have exactly the same volume as him. And if you know the volume of an object you can easily calculate its density. All Archimedes had to do was find out whether a lump of pure gold, with the same volume as the crown, weighed more. The crown would be lighter than it should be if the craftsman had deviously used some silver instead. Archimedes, in a fit of jubilation, leapt straight out of the bath and ran naked down the streets shouting “Eureka!” – “I’ve found it!”. The goldsmith soon confessedand was dealt with by the King.

“Until now, few sightings of the alien lionfish Pterois miles have been reported in the Mediterranean and it was questionablewhether the species could invade this region like it has in the western Atlantic." Demetris Kletou, co-author of the paper said in a statement. “But we've found that lionfish have recently increasedin abundance, and within a year have colonized almost the entire south eastern coast of Cyprus, assisted by sea surface warming. Lionfish were originally found in the waters of the Pacific and lndian Oceans. They likely ended up in the Caribbean and Western Atlantic after beingreleasedfrom home aquariums. The invasion of the Mediterranean has different roots. The expansion of the Suez Canal has given lionfish even moreaccessto the Mediterranean Sea and warming water temperatures have provided the perfectenvironment for the invasive species.

Upholding the motto of “Integrity, Vision and Academic Excellence”, Shanghai International Studies University (SISU) is an internationally recognized, prestigiousacademic institution distinctive for its multidisciplinary and multicultural nature, committed to preparing innovative professionals and future global leaders for a wide range of international expertise to address the critical challenges of our times. Drawing on our strengths in multi-language programs and multi-disciplinary resources, while responding to national and regional strategies, we operate more than 70 research institutes and centers serving as academic think tanks to provide advisory services on language policies, country'sdiplomatic strategies and global public opinion of China. These academic entities have contributed landmark research and are also dedicated to promoting the development of social sciences in China. We have now established partnerships with more than 330 universities and institutions from 56 countries and regions, and have maintainedclose connection with international organizations, including the United Nations and the European Union.

Discrimination against women has been alleged in hiring practices for many occupations, but it is extremely difficult to demonstrate sex-biased hiring. A change inthe way symphony orchestras recruit musicians provides an unusual way to test for sex-biased hiring. To overcome possible biases in hiring, most orchestras revised their audition policies in the 1970s and 1980s. A major change involved the use of 'blind' auditions with a 'screen' toconcealthe identity of the candidate from the jury. Female musicians in the top five symphony orchestras in the United States were less than 5% of all players in 1970 but are 25% today. We ask whether women were more likely to be advanced and/or hired with the use of 'blind' auditions. Using data from actual auditions in an individual fixed-effects framework, we findthat the screen increases by 50% the probability a woman willbeadvancedout of certain preliminary rounds. The screen also enhances, by several fold, the likelihood a female contestant will be the winner in the final round. Using data on orchestra personnel, the switch to 'blind' auditions can explain between 30% and 55% of the increasein the proportion female among new hires and between 25% and 46% of the increase in the percentage female in the orchestras since 1970.

At the height of summer the Antarctic, tourist ships move gently around the coast. Even 30 years ago such sights would have been unthinkable, but today people are willing to pay large sums of money to see the last real wilderness in the world. In the Arctic, careless human exploitation inthepasthas damaged the fragile ecosystem. Today concerned governments are trying to find ways to develop the region whilecaring for the very special natural environment. Becausethe Antarctic is less accessible than the Arctic, it is still largely undamaged by humans, although holes in the ozone layer above the Antarctic have alreadybeendiscovered. Many people believe that one way to preserve the area is to make the whole region into a world park, with every form of exploitation internationally banned.

These fascinating questions and more will be revealed by University of Manchester scientists when they take to the road on their 'Brain Bus'. The bus is taking hands on activitiesto test the senses to the suburbs, to show young and old alike how the brain works and how science can answer some of life's most captivating questions. Organiser Dr Stuart Allan, lecturer at the Faculty of Life Sciences, explains: "Three-year-olds and upwards can understand the senses and it's an area that is intriguingto all ages. "It takes effort to get out of bed on a Saturday morning and go to the Museum. We are bringing science to your doorstep and going further afield this year in the hope of finding new and different audiences."We want people to see that science is interesting as well as important in our lives, and to encouragepeople who may not consider it possible to go to University."

Life in the UK 2012 provides a unique overview of well-being in the UK today. The report is the first snapshot of lifein the UK to be delivered by the Measuring National Well-being program and will be updatedand published annually. Well-being is discussed in terms of the economy, people and the environment. Information such as the unemployment rate or numberof crimes against the person is presented alongside dataon people's thoughts and feelings, for example, satisfaction with our jobs or leisuretime and fear of crime. Together, a richer picture on 'how society is doing' is provided.

Each of us is born into and raised in a particular"time world"-- an environment with its own rhythmto which we entrain ourselves. Certain cultures have related to time as a cyclicalphenomenon, in which there is no pressure or future anxiety. The whole of existence goes around: the cycle of theseasons,of planting and harvesting, the daily return of the sun, of birth and death. In circular time there is no pressing needto achieve and create newness, or to insatiably produce more than is needed to simply survive. Additionally, there is no fear of death. Such societies have successfully integrated the past and future into a peaceful sense of the present. They also honored the wisdom of elders who held the knowledge of the past-- upon which the future was clearly linked.

A drop in the incidence of lightning strikes could impacton the frequency of wildfires, especially in tropical regions. It could also lower the incidence of lightning strikes to infrastructure and affect how greenhouse gases in the atmosphere contribute to climate change. Scientists from the Universities of Edinburgh and Leeds and Lancaster University used a newly devised method to calculate the likely incidence of lightning flashes from storm clouds. Unliketraditional calculations of lightning flashes at the global scale, which are based on the height of clouds, their approach takes into account the movement of tiny ice particles that form and move within clouds. Electrical charges buildupin these ice particles, and in cold water droplets and soft hail formed inside clouds. These are dischargedduring storms, giving rise to lightning flashes and thunder.

Founded after World War II by 51 "peace-loving states" combined to oppose future aggression, the United Nations now counts 192 member nations, includingits newest members, Nauru, Kiribati, and Tonga in 1999, Tuvalu and Yugoslavia in 2000, Switzerland and East Timor in 2002, and Montenegro in 2006. United Nations Day has been observedon October 24 since 1948 and celebrates the objectives and accomplishments of the organization, which was established on October 24, 1945. The UN engagesin peacekeeping and humanitarian missions across the globe. Though some say its influencehas declined in recent decades, the United Nations still plays a tremendous role in world politics. In 2001 the United Nations and Kofi Annan, then Secretary- General of the UN, won the Nobel Peace Prize "for their work for a better organized and more peaceful world." Since 1948 there have been 63 UN peacekeeping operations, 16 are currently underway. Thus far, close to 130 nations have contributed personnel at various times; 119 are currently providing peacekeepers. As of August 31, 2008, there were 16 peacekeeping operations underway with a total of 88,230 personnel. The small island nation of Fiji has taken part in virtually every UN peacekeeping operation, as has Canada.

Most important of all is the fact that for each new ballet-pantomime created at the Paris Opera during the July Monarchy, a new score was produced. The reason for this is simple: these ballet -pantomimes told stories - elaborate ones -and music was considered an indispensable tool in getting them across to the audience. Therefore,music had to be newly created to fit each story Music tailor-made for each new ballet-pantomime, however, was only one weapon in the Opera's explanatory arsenal. Anotherwas the ballet-pantomime libretto, a printed booklet of fifteen to forty pages in length, which was sold in the Operas lobby(like the opera libretto), and which laid out the plot in painstaking detail, scene by scene. Critics also took it upon themselves to recount the plots (of both ballet-pantomimes and operas) in their reviewsof premieres. So did the publishers of souvenir albums, which also featured pictures of famous performersand of scenes from favorite ballet- pantomimes and operas.

When I enrolled in my master's course at Oxford last year, I had come straight from medical school with the decision to leave clinical science for good. Thinking back, I realize that I didn't put very much weighton this decision at the time. But today, I more clearly understand the consequencesof leaving my original profession. When I meet old friends who are now physicians and surgeons, I sense how our views on medical problems have diverged.They scrutinize the effects of disease and try to eliminate or alleviate them; I try to understand how they come about in the first place. I feel happier working on this side of the problem, although I do occasionally miss clinical work and seeing patients. However, when I think about the rate at which my medical skills and knowledge have dissipated,the years spent reading weighty medical textbooks, the hours spent at the bedside, I sometimes wonder if these years were partly a wasteof time now that I am pursuing a research career. Nonetheless, I know the value of my medical education. It is easy to forget the importance of the biosciences when working with model organisms in basic research that seem to have nothing to do with a sick child or a suffering elderly person. Yet, I still have vivid memories of the cruel kaleidoscope of severe diseases and of how they can strikea human being. I hope to retain these memories as a guide in my current occupation.

Great engineers have a passion to improve life; a burning conviction that they can make life better for everyone. Engineers need to have a talent for invention and innovation, but what drivesthem is the conviction that they can find a better way to do things; a cheaper and more efficient solution to the problems of human existence on this planet of limitedresources that we call Earth. Many of us spenda lot of time complaining about the difficulties and problems of life. It is easy to find fault with things that make daily life arduous. For an engineer, these difficulties can be opportunities. How can this be made to work better? How can that process be made more efficient? How can componentsbe made more cheaply, more accurately and more fit-for- purpose? Great engineers are convinced that everything can be improved.Instead of complaining, they think of ways to make things better.

Learning is a process by which behavior or knowledge changes as a result of experience. Learning from experience plays a major role IN enabling us to do many things that we clearly were not born to do, from the simplest tasks, such as flipping a light switch, to the more complex,such as playing a musical instrument. To many people, the term “learning” signifiesthe activities that students do - reading, listening, and taking tests in order to acquire new information. This process, which is known as cognitive learning, is just one type of learning, however. Another way that we learn is by , which is the focus of this module. You probably associatecertain holidays with specific sights, sounds, and smells, or foods with specific flavors and textures. We are not the only specieswith this skill even the simplest animals such as the earthworm can learn by association

Over many centuries and across many territories the Romans were able to win an astonishing number of military victories and their success was due to several important factors. Italy was a peninsula not easily attacked. Therewasa huge pool of fighting men to draw upon, a disciplined and innovative army, a centralized command and line of supply, expert engineers, effective diplomacy througha network of allies, and an inclusive approach to conquer people, whichallowed for strengthening and broadening of the Roman power and logistical bases. Further,her allies not only supplied, equipped and paid for additional men but they also supplied vital materials such as grain and ships. Ontopofall this Rome was more or less in a continuous state of war or readiness for it and believed absolutely in the necessity of defending and imposing on others what she firmly believed was her cultural superiority.

Uniquely stable, they seemedto participate in no chemical reactions. But by understanding the stability of the noble gases, physicists discovered the key to chemical bonding itself.Dmitri Mendeleev added the noble gases to his periodic table in 1902, where he arranged the elements in rows and columns accordingto their atomic weight. Mendeleev was able to see repeating orperiodicpatterns in their properties. The noble gases appeared regularlyin the periodic table, occurring in every eighth position, at least amongst the lighter elements.

Colorful poison frogs in the Amazon owe their great diversityto ancestors that leapt into the region from the Andes Mountains several times during the last 10 million years, a new study from The University of Texas at Austin suggests. This is the first study to show that the Andes have been a majorsource of diversityfor the Amazon basin, one of the largest reservoirsof biological diversity on Earth. The finding runs counterto the idea that Amazonian diversity is the result of evolution only within the tropicalforest itself. "Basically, the Amazon basin is a melting pot for South American frogs," says graduate student Juan Santos, lead author of the study. "Poison frogs there have come from multiple places of origin,notably the Andes Mountains, over many millions of years. We have shown that you cannot understand Amazonian biodiversity by looking only in the basin.Adjacent regions have played a major role.

Early humans were hunter-gatherers, roaming from place to place, but their movements were controlled by the need for water. When humans startedto grow food, establishing permanent settlements, water was needed for crops and animals as well as for people, sosettlements have always grown up near reliable sources of water. Most major towns lie on the banks of rivers, or, where there are no streams or rivers, settlements exist where underground water can be reached by digging wells. The management of water resources has a longhistory.The oldest known dam in the world was constructed in Egypt about 5000 years ago, and was used for storing drinking and irrigation water. Farmers in Arabia at this time used the craters of extinct volcanoes as storage tanks for irrigation water and dug deep wells for their drinking water. Excavated ruins in India of similar antiquity retain the remains of water supply and drainage systems, whichincluded baths and swimming pools.

Away from the rumble of Shanghai's highways and the cacophony of the shopping districts, stroll down side streets filled with rows of tall brick houses.In the early evening or on a weekend morning, you'll hear the soundof classical music driftingfrom a piano, played by a 10-year old or a grandmother in her seventies. Wanderdown another alley toward concrete skyscrapersand you'll hear Beethoven or Mozart flowing from a violin, or perhaps a cello, accordion or flute. In China, classical music is boomingas mightily as the 1812 Overture.