'CLASS DIAMONDS' graduate with honours

Twenty people from South Ayrshire with learning disabilities, the youngest aged in their 20's and the oldest in their 60's, have all successfully graduated from a 'Class Diamonds' course which was held in the Citadel in Ayr.The 'Class Diamonds' initiative was originally launched in September 2002, to encourage people approaching or in retirement, to remain active in their homes and in their communities. The course aims to encourage exercise and activity, raise health and safety awareness, and courses have been successfully run throughout South Ayrshire.

A course for people with physical disabilities was run in 2005, and it became apparent that people with learning disabilities would benefit from a course specially designed for them.By working together members of the South Ayrshire Community Safety Partnership, the South Ayrshire Sports Development Team and NHS Ayrshire & Arran adapted the course to meet the needs of the participants.

To mark the achievement of those who took part in the course the Convener of South Ayrshire Council's Community Safety Committee, Councillor Hugh Hunter and the Chair of the South Ayrshire Community Safety Partnership, Councillor Douglas Campbell presented each class member with a certificate. The invited guests and members of the class then enjoyed refreshments and a special celebration 'Class Diamonds' cake.

Councillor Hugh Hunter said: "I would like to congratulate everyone who attended and successfully completed the course."After speaking to members of the course, I very quickly became aware just how much fun everyone involved in this 'Class Diamonds' course has had."The range of activities and topics covered in the 'Class Diamonds' course is always interesting and varied, and this course has been no exception."People with learning disabilities should have the same opportunity to participate in courses as everyone else. With hard work from those involved in organising the course, it was able to be adapted, but the essence of it remained the same."

Marine Parks

Marine parks are established over tidal lands and waters to protect and conserve the values of the natural marine environment while allowing for its sustainable use.Multiple-use management allows for many different activities in marine parks. Zoning plans set out the kinds of activities that can occur within each area.Marine parks protect a range of habitats including mangrove wetlands, seagrass beds, mudflats, sandbanks, beaches, rocky outcrops and fringingreefs. Marine park boundaries can be established over tidal lands and waters up to the highest astronomical tide. They include the subsoil below and airspace above the boundaries. The plants and animals within the boundary are also part of the marine park.

Exchanging Shares

A "family of funds" is a group of mutual funds that share administrative and distribution systems. Each fund in a family may have different investment objectives and follow different strategies.Some funds offer exchange privileges within a family of funds, allowing shareholders to transfer their holdings from one fund to another as their investment goals or tolerance for risk change. While some funds impose fees for exchanges, most funds typically do not. To learn more about a fund's exchange policies, call the fund's toll-free number, visit its website, or read the "shareholder information" section of the prospectus.Bear in mind that exchanges have tax consequences. Even if the fund doesn't charge you for the transfer, you'll be liable for any capital gain on the sale of your old shares — or, depending on the circumstances, eligible to take a capital loss.

Investment Incentives

There are many reasons why Poland is so attractive to investors. Among the most significant are the size of the Polish market, the low labour costs, the perspectives for economic growth and the availability of personnel.

Our country is open for investors. Poland’s legal system is favourable to the establishment of businesses by aliens and the government offers many instruments for support. PAIiIZ can help by enabling foreign investors to make use of the rich choice of offers provided for their assistance.

Poland offers foreign investors many incentives for investments which are tailored to their needs. There are possibilities to link various forms of aid - e.g. in Special Economic Zones - and tax incentives that are issued by the Gmina (local authorities) councils.The EU structural funds also support investments in Poland. These are not only direct, but also indirect investments, which help to build and modernise the existing infrastructure.

These are the main reasons why it is worthwhile investing in Poland:

* The investment incentives in the various special economic zones and Gminas,
* The availability of funding through EU structural funds,
* The availability of a broad range of locations on Brownfield and Greenfield sites, at attractive prices to investors,
* Special Economic Zones,
* Industrial and Technology Parks,
* Sectors of great opportunities.

Venomous Lionfish invades coastal waters

Native to the tropical Indo-Pacific region, lionfish are often kept in both public and private aquariums. Since 2000, however, lionfish have been observed, primarily by SCUBA divers in coral, rocky and artificial reefs along the southeast coast of the U.S., from Florida to North Carolina and also throughout the Bahamas, Bermuda and Cuba. In more recent years lionfish have also been caught by bottom fishing anglers. Scientists expect lionfish to continue to disperse throughout the Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico and the Florida Keys. There is also increasing concern among fishery scientists that lionfish, having no natural enemies, may adversely impact natural fish populations. In addition, this fish has venomous spines and may pose a danger to divers and anglers alike. NOAA would like to encourage fishermen to be extremely cautious and avoid contact with the venomous spines of the lionfish and to help us spread the word to other anglers.

Wages To Fall 0.5 Per Sent In 2009: ILO

Economic turmoil will erode the wages of millions of workers in 2009, fanning the flames of global recession, the International Labor Organization (ILO) said on Wednesday.Inflation-adjusted pay in rich nations will fall 0.5 per cent in the coming year -- the first wage decrease since before 2001 -- after having increased 0.8 per cent this year, according to new estimates from the United Nations agency.

Developing country wages should prove more resilient, led by continued gains in China and India, the ILO said. On a global basis, it estimated real wages will rise 1.1 per cent in 2009, compared to 1.7 per cent in 2008."For the world's 1.5 billion wage earners, difficult times lie ahead," ILO Director-General Juan Somavia said in the Global Wage Report, whose comparable data only stretches back to 2001.

Somavia, a Chilean, called for strong collective bargaining to counter any decrease in wages linked to the world's financial and economic crises that the ILO has previously said will wipe out 20 million jobs by the end of 2009.In previous periods of contraction, every 1 percentage point drop in gross domestic product (GDP) per capita brought about a 1.55 percentage point decline in average wages, making it even harder for people to spend and invest, according to ILO data.

"If this pattern were to be followed in the rapidly spreading global downturn, it would deepen the recession and delay the recovery," Somavia said.But even when economic growth rates were buoyant, the ILO report said wages have failed to keep pace.For each 1 percentage point of GDP growth from 1995 to 2007, average wages only increased 0.75 percentage points, with pay rates largely failing to increase in line with productivity growth levels, it found.

Inequalities between top and bottom wages have also risen, most notably in the United States, Germany, Poland, Argentina, China and Thailand, the ILO said.France, Spain, Brazil and Indonesia were found to have reduced those gaps somewhat in recent years.Women's wages represent an average of 70 to 90 per cent of men's wages in most major economies, though some Asian nations have larger disparities, the report said.People at the bottom of the wage ladder will be squeezed hardest by decreasing rates of pay in the coming period of economic contraction, according to ILO expert Manuela Tomei.

"If they fall too much, this will make the crisis even worse," she told a news briefing in Geneva.

Greater efforts to empower workers...

Juney Whank Falls

Juney Whank Falls is divided into an upper and lower section. Both can be viewed from the footbridge which crosses Juney Whank Branch at the falls. Together they drop 90 feet from top to bottom. The trail to the waterfall is 0.8 miles roundtrip and is considered moderate in difficulty.

The stream and falls are said to be named after a Mr. Junaluska "Juney" Whank, who may be buried in the area.

Access Trail: Juney Whank Falls Trail
Trailhead: Follow the signs through downtown Bryson City to Deep Creek Campground. Continue past the campground to the trailhead at the end of Deep Creek Road. Backtrack on foot 0.1 mile along the road to the trail

Hemorrhagic Fevers

Also called: VHFs
Viral hemorrhagic fevers (VHFs) are a group of illnesses caused by four families of viruses. These include the Ebola and Marburg viruses and Lassa fever virus. VHFs have common features: they affect many organs, they damage the blood vessels and they affect the body's ability to regulate itself. Some VHFs cause mild disease, but some, like Ebola or Marburg, cause severe disease and death.

VHFs are found around the world. Specific diseases are usually limited to areas where the animals that carry them live. For example, Lassa fever is limited to rural areas of West Africa where rats and mice carry the virus.

The risk for travelers is low, but you should avoid visiting areas where there are disease outbreaks. Because there are no effective treatments for some of these viral infections, there is concern about their use in bioterrorism.

Redcurrant

The Red currant (Ribes rubrum) is a member of the genus Ribes in the gooseberry family Grossulariaceae, native to parts of western Europe (Belgium, France, Germany, Netherlands, Northern Italy and Northern Spain).Redcurrant fruit is slightly more sour than its relative the blackcurrant, and is cultivated mainly for jams and cooked dishes, rather than for eating raw. For example, in Scandinavia it is often used in fruit soups and summer puddings, and in Germany it is also used in combination with custard or meringue as a filling for tarts. However, unlike the cranberry, it certainly can be enjoyed in its fresh state and without the addition of
sugar.

Although blackcurrant is more traditionally associated with medicinal uses, English and German language herbalist sources consider redcurrant berries to have fever-reducing, sweat-inducing, menstrual-flow inducing, mildly laxative, astringent, appetite increasing, blood cleansing, diuretic and digestive properties. Some of these proposed effects are probable, due to the verified high levels of vitamin C, fruit acids, and fiber the berries contain. Tea made from dried redcurrant leaves is said to ease the symptoms of gout and rheumatism, be useful in compresses for poorly healing wounds, and as a gargling solution for mouth infections.

According to the "Orbis Naturführer" (Orbis Verlag, Munich, 2000), while Ribes rubrum and R.nigrum are native to northern and eastern Europe, large berried cultivars of the redcurrant were first produced in Belgium and northern France in the 1600s. In modern times, numerous cultivars have been selected; some of these have escaped gardens and can be found in the wild across Europe and extending into Asia.

The white currant is also a cultivar of Ribes rubrum, being merely a less sour and colourless variant of the redcurrant, and not a separate species, though sometimes being named Ribes sativum or Ribes silvestre, and sold as a different fruit.

Russia To Move Missiles To Baltic

Russia is to deploy new missiles in a Baltic enclave near Nato member Poland, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev says.

Short-range Iskander missiles in the Kaliningrad region would "neutralise" the planned US anti-missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, he said.

The US says its shield is a defence against missiles from "rogue" nations, but Moscow sees it as a direct threat.Mr Medvedev also said he wanted to extend Russia's presidential term to six years from the current four. He did not explain if he wanted to extend his own term, or change the rules for his successor.

There has long been speculation that Mr Medvedev is a stop-gap so that Prime Minister Putin - who served the maximum two consecutive terms - can return to the top job, correspondents say.

'Conceited' US policy

In his first state-of-the nation address, Mr Medvedev said Moscow would deploy the Iskander missile system in the Kaliningrad region - between Nato members Lithuania and Poland - to "neutralise - if necessary - the [US] anti-missile system".

"Naturally, we also consider using for the same purpose the resources of Russia's navy," he said.

Mr Medvedev also said Russia would jam the US anti-missile system electronically.Mr Medvedev's announcement is extremely provocative, but the Kremlin's clear message is that America is to blame, the BBC's Rupert Wingfield-Hayes in Moscow says.Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus later said that Russia's decision to deploy missiles was "beyond comprehension".

In his speech to lawmakers, the Russian leader also said the August war in Georgia had resulted from a "conceited" US foreign policy.He said "the conflict in the Caucasus was used as a pretext for sending Nato warships to the Black Sea and also for the foisting on Europe of America's anti-missile systems".Mr Medvedev, who succeeded Vladimir Putin in May, vowed that Russia "won't retreat in the Caucasus".Mr Medvedev also blamed Washington for the global financial crisis, but said Russia would "overcome" the challenge.

Lymphoma

Also called: Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma

Lymphoma is a cancer of a part of the immune system called the lymphatic system. There are many types of lymphoma. One type is called Hodgkin's disease. The rest are called non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Non-Hodgkin's lymphomas begin when a type of white blood cell, called a T cell or B cell, becomes abnormal. The cell divides again and again, making more and more abnormal cells. These abnormal cells can spread to almost any other part of the body. Most of the time, doctors can't determine why a person gets non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma can cause many symptoms, such as
* Swollen, painless lymph nodes in the neck, armpits or groin

* Unexplained weight loss

* Fever

* Soaking night sweats

* Coughing, trouble breathing or chest pain

* Weakness and tiredness that don't go away

* Pain, swelling or a feeling of fullness in the abdomen

Your doctor will perform an exam and lab tests to determine if you have lymphoma.

Indian Education

The origin of the Indian Education Department dates back to pre-Independence days when for the first time a separate Department was created in 1910 to look after education. However, soon after India achieved its Independence on 15th August. 1947, a full fledged Ministry of Education was established on 29th August 1947. The nomenclature and responsibilities of the Education Department has undergone changes from time to time since Independence. At Present the Ministry has two Departments namely:

1. Department of Higher Education
2. Department of School Education and Literecy

Tropical Cyclones Wash Away Carbon

Hurricanes and typhoons, normally seen as looming threats from global warming, are actually helping to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Each year humans emit approximately 7.2 billion tons of the greenhouse gas, trapping vast amounts of heat in the air and oceans. Tropical cyclones derive their energy from warm seas, and some scientists believe global warming will spawn more frequent and more intense storms unless drastic effort is undertaken to cut emissions.

But Robert Hilton of the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom and a team of researchers found that when two powerful storms lashed Taiwan in 2004, rains eroded thousands of tons of carbon-rich plant matter and soil. The material was sent coursing out of the island's steep mountain range down the LiWu River and into the deep sea, where it was buried in sediment.

"Over the last 30 years large storms, which only last a few days, dominated the erosion there," Hilton said. "Between 77 and 92 percent of carbon was eroded by these storms."Globally, rivers slough vast amounts of carbon off continents and into the oceans. The Amazon River, the largest in the world by volume, dumps an estimated 13 million tons of carbon into the sea each year.

MCCAIN ECONOMIC PLAN

Senator McCain's economic proposals centre on more help for homeowners who are facing foreclosure, and he has called for more tax cuts to help investors, retired people and workers.The new tax breaks would cost about $52bn.The new help to homeowners is much more expensive, costing around $300bn, although Senator McCain says it should be funded out of the $700bn bail-out package.

The key elements are:

• US government to buy up distressed mortgages and refinance them at lower values, letting borrowers enjoy more affordable rates.
• New lower Federal tax rate of 10% on the private pension income in 2009 and 2010
• Expanded tax deduction for investment losses in 2008 and 2009 and a 50% increase in the capital gains allowance
• Tax-free unemployment benefits for two years
• People with share-based retirement accounts allowed to postpone withdrawals until markets improve

Senator McCain's plan would follow the $300bn housing rescue plan passed by Congress over the summer - but unlike that plan, which requires the banks to write-down the value of distressed mortgages first, he proposes that the federal government would absorb the losses from the sub-prime lending fiasco.Senator McCain has attacked the Obama plan for being too expensive and wasting taxpayers' money.His plan is also less targeted at job creation and helping the unemployed and more at preserving the value of assets, both stocks and home values.

Senator McCain believes the key to the long-term recovery of the economy is to keep taxes low, so he wants to retain all the tax cuts made by President Bush, and increase tax breaks for companies to encourage investment.

Global Warming

Global warming refers to an average increase in the Earth's temperature, which in turn causes changes in climate. A warmer Earth may lead to changes in rainfall patterns, a rise in sea level, and a wide range of impacts on plants, wildlife, and humans. When scientists talk about the issue of climate change, their concern is about global warming caused by human activities.

Love: Never Give Up!

A true love story that love does come when we least Expect it. If you think that the circumstances in your life will inhibit any chance of finding the love of your life, you may be in for a surprise. Rae thought that she had no chance at ever finding her

Enzyme kinetics

Enzyme kinetics is the study of the chemical reactions that are catalysed by enzymes, with a focus on their reaction rates. The study of an enzyme's kinetics reveals the catalytic mechanism of this enzyme, its role in metabolism, how its activity is controlled, and how a drug or a poison might inhibit the enzyme.

Enzymes are usually protein molecules that manipulate other molecules — the enzymes' substrates. These target molecules bind to an enzyme's active site and are transformed into products through a series of steps known as the enzymatic mechanism. These mechanisms can be divided into single-substrate and multiple-substrate mechanisms. Kinetic studies on enzymes that only bind one substrate, such as triosephosphate isomerase, aim to measure the affinity with which the enzyme binds this substrate and the turnover rate.

Microbiology

Microbiology is the study of microorganisms, which are unicellular or cell-cluster microscopic organisms. This includes eukaryotes such as fungi and protists, and prokaryotes, which are bacteria and archaea. Viruses, though not strictly classed as living organisms, are also studied. In short; microbiology refers to the study of life and organisms that are too small to be seen with the naked eye.

Microbiology is a broad term which includes virology, mycology, parasitology and other branches. A microbiologist is a specialist in microbiology.

Microbiology is researched actively, and the field is advancing continually. We have probably only studied about one percent of all of the microbe species on Earth. Although microbes were first observed over three hundred years ago, the field of microbiology can be said to be in its infancy relative to older biological disciplines such as zoology and botany.

Retroviruses

The genetic material in retroviruses is in the form of RNA molecules, while the genetic material of their hosts is in the form of DNA. When a retrovirus infects a host cell, it will introduce its RNA together with some enzymes, namely reverse transcriptase and integrase, into the cell. This RNA molecule from the retrovirus must produce a DNA copy from its RNA molecule before it can be integrated into the genetic material of the host cell. The process of producing a DNA copy from an RNA molecule is termed reverse transcription. It is carried out by one of the enzymes carried in the virus, called reverse transcriptase. After this DNA copy is produced and is free in the nucleus of the host cell, it must be incorporated into the genome of the host cell. That is, it must be inserted into the large DNA molecules in the cell (the chromosomes). This process is done by another enzyme carried in the virus called integrase.

Now that the genetic material of the virus is incorporated and has become part of the genetic material of the host cell, it can be said that the host cell is now modified to contain a new gene. If this host cell divides later, its descendants will all contain the new genes. Sometimes the genes of the retrovirus do not express their information immediately.

Run-time system

In computer science, the runtime system is software that provides services for a running program but is itself not considered to be part of the operating system.[citation needed]

Examples include:

* the code that is generated by the compiler to manage the runtime stack.

* library code for handling memory management (for example, malloc).

* code that handles dynamic loading and linking.

* debugger code that is generated at compile time or run time.

* application-level thread management code.

Byte-code interpreters and virtual machines can also be considered runtime systems. Services that run in concurrent processes are more likely to be considered middleware.

Network telescope

A network telescope (also known as a darknet, internet motion sensor or black hole) is an internet system that allows one to observe different large-scale events taking place on the Internet. The basic idea is to observe traffic targeting the dark (unused) address-space of the network. Since all traffic to these addresses is suspicious, one can gain information about possible network attacks (random scanning worms, and DDoS backscatter) as well as other misconfigurations by observing it.

The resolution of the Internet telescope is dependent on the number of dark addresses it monitors. For example, a large Internet telescope that monitors traffic to 16,777,216 addresses (a /8 Internet telescope in IPv4), has a higher probability of observing a relatively small event than a smaller telescope that monitors 65,536 addresses (a /16 Internet telescope).

A variant of a network telescope is a sparse darknet, or greynet, consisting of a region of IP address space that is sparsely populated with 'darknet' addresses interspersed with active (or 'lit') IP addresses.

Wide Area Augmentation System

The Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) is an air navigation aid developed by the Federal Aviation Administration to augment the Global Positioning System (GPS), with the goal of improving its accuracy, integrity, and availability. Essentially, WAAS is intended to enable aircraft to rely on GPS for all phases of flight, including precision approaches to any airport within its coverage area.

WAAS uses a network of ground-based reference stations (Benchmark DGPSRs transmitting differential corrections (DCs, located within spaces protected from the public inside airportsin North America and Hawaii, to measure small variations in the GPS satellites' signals in the western hemisphere. Measurements from the reference stations are routed to master stations, which queue the received DCs and send the correction messages to geostationary WAAS satellites in a timely manner (at least every 5 seconds or better). Those satellites broadcast the correction messages back to Earth, where WAAS-enabled GPS receiver uses the corrections while computing its position to improve accuracy. The longer any given DC has been delayed, the less benefit it will produce.

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) calls this type of system a Satellite Based Augmentation System (SBAS). Europe and Asia are developing their own SBASs, the Indian Gagan, the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) and the Japanese Multi-functional Satellite Augmentation System (MSAS), respectively. Commercial systems include StarFire and OmniSTAR.

Run-time system

In computer science, the runtime system is software that provides services for a running program but is itself not considered to be part of the operating system.[citation needed]

Examples include:

* the code that is generated by the compiler to manage the runtime stack.

* library code for handling memory management (for example, malloc).

* code that handles dynamic loading and linking.

* debugger code that is generated at compile time or run time.

* application-level thread management code.

Byte-code interpreters and virtual machines can also be considered runtime systems. Services that run in concurrent processes are more likely to be considered middleware.

Deadlocks

In some cases, two transactions may, in the course of their processing, attempt to access the same portion of a database at the same time, in a way that prevents them from proceeding. For example, transaction A may access portion X of the database, and transaction B may access portion Y of the database. If, at that point, transaction A then tries to access portion Y of the database while transaction B tries to access portion X, a deadlock occurs, and neither transaction can move forward. Transaction-processing systems are designed to detect these deadlocks when they occur. Typically both transactions will be cancelled and rolled back, and then they will be started again in a different order, automatically, so that the deadlock doesn't occur again. Or sometimes, just one of the deadlocked transactions will be cancelled, rolled back, and automatically re-started after a short delay.

Deadlocks can also occur between three or more transactions. The more transactions involved, the more difficult they are to detect, to the point that transaction processing systems find there is a practical limit to the deadlocks they can detect.

Data quality

1. Data Quality refers to the degree of excellence exhibited by the data in relation to the portrayal of the actual phenomena. GIS Glossary

2. The state of completeness, validity, consistency, timeliness and accuracy that makes data appropriate for a specific use. Government of British Columbia

3. The totality of features and characteristics of data that bears on their ability to satisfy a given purpose; the sum of the degrees of excellence for factors related to data

Object-relational database

An object-relational database (ORD) or object-relational database management system (ORDBMS) is a database management system (DBMS) similar to a relational database, but with an object-oriented database model: objects, classes and inheritance are directly supported in database schemas and in the query language. In addition, it supports extension of the data model with custom data-types and methods.

One aim for this type of system is to bridge the gap between conceptual data modeling techniques such as Entity-relationship diagram (ERD) and object-relational mapping (ORM), which often use classes and inheritance, and relational databases, which do not directly support them.

Another, related, aim is to bridge the gap between relational databases and the object-oriented modeling techniques used in programming languages such as Java (programming language), C++ or C#. However, a more popular alternative for achieving such a bridge is to use a standard relational database systems with some form of ORM software.

Types of spam

Spam has several definitions, varying by the source.

* Unsolicited bulk e-mail (UBE)—unsolicited e-mail, sent in large quantities.
* Unsolicited commercial e-mail (UCE)—this more restrictive definition is used by regulators whose mandate is to regulate commerce, such as the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.
* Any email message that is fraudulent.
* Any email message where the sender’s identity is forged, or messages sent though unprotected SMTP servers, unauthorized proxies, or botnets

Grayware

Grayware (or greyware) is a general term sometimes used as a classification for applications that behave in a manner that is annoying or undesirable, and yet less serious or troublesome than malware. Grayware encompasses spyware, adware, dialers, joke programs, remote access tools, and any other unwelcome files and programs apart from viruses that are designed to harm the performance of computers on your network. The term has been in use since at least as early as September 2004.

Grayware refers to applications or files that are not classified as viruses or trojan horse programs, but can still negatively affect the performance of the computers on your network and introduce significant security risks to your organization. Often grayware performs a variety of undesired actions such as irritating users with pop-up windows, tracking user habits and unnecessarily exposing computer vulnerabilities to attack.

EICAR test file

The EICAR test file (official name: EICAR Standard Anti-Virus Test File) is a file, developed by the European Institute for Computer Antivirus Research, to test the response of computer antivirus (AV) programs. The rationale behind it is to allow people, companies, and AV programmers to test their software without having to use a real computer virus that could cause actual damage should the AV not respond correctly. EICAR likens the use of a live virus to test AV software to setting a fire in a trashcan to test a fire alarm, and promotes the EICAR test file as a safe alternative.

A compliant virus scanner, when detecting the file, will respond in exactly the same manner as if it found genuinely harmful code. Its use can be more versatile than straightforward detection - for example, a file containing the EICAR test string can be compressed or archived, and then the antivirus software can be run to see whether it can detect the test string in the compressed file.

Systems psychology

Systems psychology is a branch of applied psychology that studies human behaviour and experience in complex systems. It is inspired by systems theory and systems thinking, and based on the theoretical work of Roger Barker, Gregory Bateson, Humberto Maturana and others. It is an approach in psychology, in which groups and individuals, are considered as systems in homeostasis. Alternative terms here are "systemic psychology", "systems behavior", and "systems-based psychology".

Types of systems psychology

In the scientific literature different kind of systems psychology have been mentioned in the scientific literature:

Applied systems psychology
De Greene in 1970 described applied systems psychology as being connected with engineering psychology and human factor.

Cognitive systems theory
Cognitive systems psychology is a part of cognitive psychology and like existential psychology, attempts to dissolve the barrier between conscious and the unconscious mind.

Contract-systems psychology
Contract-systems psychology is about the human systems actualization through praticipative organizations.

Family systems psychology
Family systems psychology is a more general name for the subfield of family thearpists and like Murray Bowen, Michael E. Kerr, and Baard. and researchers have begun to theoretize a psychology of the family as a system.

Organismic-systems psychology
Through the application of organismic-systems biology to human behavior Ludwig von Bertalanffy conceived and developed the organismic-systems psychology, as the theoretical prospect needed for the gradual comprehension of the various ways human personalities may evolve and how could they evolve properly

Software Process Innovation

Software process innovation can take the form of the development of new techniques, tools or methods for software development, as for example with extreme programming (XP) or SCRUM. It can concentrate on one phase of a more traditional development process, such as requirements elicitation - introducing more creative or imaginative techniques or tools. Software process innovations can be user-led , where expert users collaborate in the writing of software which meets their own needs (for example the Linux community). Process innovation can also focus on market analysis:where the demand for new software products lies. Common to many software process innovations is a focus on productive work, and the avoidance of thrashing – unfocused work which is neither productive nor generating new ideas. A more modern pre-occupation is with ‘flow’ , (Csíkszentmihályi’s description of a mental state characterized by high energy and focus) in a software team

The relationship between software process innovation and innovative software products is a complex one. At the moment there is no particular evidence that innovative software processes necessarily result in innovative software products. Some forms of innovative software products may be best developed using traditional methods .

Organizational psychology

Industrial and organizational psychology also known as "work psychology", "occupational psychology" or "personnel psychology" concerns the application of psychological theories, research methods, and intervention strategies to workplace issues. Industrial and organizational psychologists are interested in making organizations more productive while ensuring workers are able to lead physically and psychologically healthy lives. Relevant topics include personnel psychology, motivation and leadership, employee selection, training and development, organization development and guided change, organizational behavior, and work and family issues.

Roboticist

A roboticist designs, builds, programs, and experiments with robots. Since robotics is a highly interdisciplinary field, roboticists often have backgrounds in a number of disciplines including computer science, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, and computer engineering. Roboticists often work for university, industry, and government research labs, but may also work for startup companies and other entrepreneurial firms. Amateur Roboticist is also a growing hobby all over the world.

Transport engineering

Transport engineering (alternatively transportation engineering) is the science of safe and efficient movement of people and goods (transport). It is a sub-discipline of civil engineering.

The planning aspects of transportation engineering relate to urban planning, and involve technical forecasting decisions and political factors. Technical forecasting of passenger travel usually involves an urban transportation planning model, requiring the estimation of trip generation (how many trips for what purpose), trip distribution (destination choice, where is the traveler going), mode choice (what mode is being taken), and route assignment (which streets or routes are being used). More sophisticated forecasting can include other aspects of traveler decisions, including auto ownership, trip chaining (the decision to link individual trips together in a tour) and the choice of residential or business location (known as land use forecasting).

The Bering Land Bridge

The Bering Land Bridge , the Jesuit scholar José de Acosta suggested that the peoples of the Americas arrived via a now-submerged land bridge from Asia as primitive hunters, later settling into sedentary communities and cities. In Notes on the State of Virginia (1781), Thomas Jefferson theorized that the ancestors of Native Americans crossed the Bering Strait from Asia, a viewpoint that came to prevail in the 20th century, as carbon dating and molecular genetics began to shed light on the origins of native populations.

Between the 1950s and the 1980s, the Bering Land Bridge theory came to be viewed as proven beyond any doubt. Most archaeologists came to believe that the native cultures of the Americas had been isolated from the Old World after the closing of the Bering land route, when they were still in the hunter-gatherer stage and developed without any outside influences for the next 9,000 years until the time of Columbus. It was also believed at the time that trans-oceanic travel only became possible in the 15th century, after key advances in Old World shipbuilding and navigation. This belief is supported by the lack of substantial evidence of Old World influences on American civilizations.

Transport engineering

Transport engineering (alternatively transportation engineering) is the science of safe and efficient movement of people and goods (transport). It is a sub-discipline of civil engineering.

The planning aspects of transportation engineering relate to urban planning, and involve technical forecasting decisions and political factors. Technical forecasting of passenger travel usually involves an urban transportation planning model, requiring the estimation of trip generation (how many trips for what purpose), trip distribution (destination choice, where is the traveler going), mode choice (what mode is being taken), and route assignment (which streets or routes are being used). More sophisticated forecasting can include other aspects of traveler decisions, including auto ownership, trip chaining (the decision to link individual trips together in a tour) and the choice of residential or business location (known as land use forecasting).

Navigational database

Navigational databases are characterized by the fact that objects in the database are found primarily by following references from other objects. Traditionally navigational interfaces are procedural, though one could characterize some modern systems like XPath as being simultaneously navigational and declarative.

Navigational access is traditionally associated with the network model and hierarchical model of database interfaces and have evolved into Set-oriented systems . Navigational techniques use "pointers" and "paths" to navigate among data records (also known as "nodes"). This is in contrast to the relational model (implemented in relational databases), which strives to use "declarative" or logic programming techniques in which you ask the system for what you want instead of how to navigate to it.

Software prototyping

Software prototyping, a possible activity during software development, is the creation of prototypes, i.e., incomplete versions of the software program being developed.

A prototype typically implements only a small subset of the features of the eventual program, and the implementation may be completely different from that of the eventual product.

The purpose of a prototype is to allow users of the software to evaluate proposals for the design of the eventual product by actually trying them out, rather than having to interpret and evaluate the design based on descriptions.

Database security

Database security is the system, processes, and procedures that protect a database from unintended activity. Unintended activity can be categorized as authenticated misuse, malicious attacks or inadvertent mistakes made by authorized individuals or processes. Database security is also a specialty within the broader discipline of computer security.

Traditionally databases have been protected from external connections by firewalls or routers on the network perimeter with the database environment existing on the internal network opposed to being located within a demilitarized zone. Additional network security devices that detect and alert on malicious database protocol traffic include network intrusion detection systems along with host-based intrusion detection systems.

Split proxy server

A split proxy is a proxy implemented as two programs installed on two different computers. Since they are effectively two parts of the same program, they can communicate with each other in a more efficient way than they can communicate with a more standard resource or tool such as a website or browser. This is ideal for compressing data over a slow link, such as a wireless or mobile data service, as well as for reducing the issues regarding high latency links (such as satellite internet) where establishing a TCP connection is time consuming.

Taking the example of web browsing, the user's browser is pointed to a local proxy which then communicates with its other half at some remote location. This remote server fetches the requisite data, repackages it, and sends it back to the user's local proxy, which then unpacks the data and presents it to the browser in the standard fashion.

Hierarchical data model

Hierarchical data model, data is organized into a tree-like structure. The structure allows repeating information using parent/child relationships: each parent can have many children but each child only has one parent. All attributes of a specific record are listed under an entity type. In a database, an entity type is the equivalent of a table; each individual record is represented as a row and an attribute as a column. Entity types are related to each other using 1: N mapping, also known as one-to-many relationships.

Loss of Biodiversity

Farnsworth for example, has found that 25% of all prescriptions dispensed from community pharmacies in the United States from l959 to l980 contained active ingredients extracted from higher plants. A much higher percentage is found in the developing world. As many as 80% of all people living in developing countries, or roughly two thirds of the world's population, rely almost exclusively on traditional
medicines using natural substances, mostly derived from plants.

New Mobility Agenda

The New Mobility Agenda is an international institution which while virtual and an open collaborative was originally set up by an international working group meeting at the Abbey de Royaumont near Paris with the support of the OECD in Paris in 1974 to challenge old ideas and practices in the field of urban transport through a long term collaborative program of information exchange, education and peer support.

The Agenda today draws together the experience, expertise and support of more than four thousand individuals and groups world wide in an open collaborative peer network. One of the original proponents of this approach, Professor Mikoto Usui then director of the OECD Development Centre, referred to it in the founding meeting at the “Abbé de Royaumont as an “invisible college”.

Printing Technology

Printers are regularly confidential by the underlying print technology they employ; numerous such technologies have been developed over the years.

The choice of print engine has a extensive effect on what jobs a printer is suitable for, as various technologies are capable of dissimilar levels of image/text quality, print speed, low cost, noise; in addition, some technologies are unsuitable for certain types of physical media (such as carbon paper or transparencies).

Another aspect of printer technology that is regularly forgotten is resistance to modification: liquid ink such as from an inkjet head or fabric ribbon becomes absorbed by the paper fibers, so papers printed with liquid ink are more difficult to alter than documents printed with toner or solid inks, which do not penetrate below the paper surface.

France

In France the sou (until 1715 sol) was the name of a coin. It was first minted in gold, from the 1200s in silver and during the 1700s in copper. The sou tournois was a 12-denier coin, one-twentieth of the livre tournois (Tournois pound), while the sou parisis was a 15-denier coin. After decimalisation in France, the sou became the name for a five-centime coin, one-twentieth of the French franc(Until the late 1960s, the expression "20 sou" was a synonym of 1 Franc).
To this day, sou is used as jargon for money, as in j'ai pas de sous. "I'm broke", "I haven't got two bob to rub together".


Sou of copper, coined 1767 for Louis XV of France[edit]

Vitmains and Minerals

Vitamins and minerals are substances that are found in foods we eat. Your body needs them to work properly, so you grow and develop just like you should. When it comes to vitamins, each one has a special role to play. For example:
Vitamin D in milk helps your bones.
Vitamin A in carrots helps you see at night.
Vitamin C in oranges helps your body heal if you get a cut.
B vitamins in leafy green vegetables help your body make protein and energy.