Question - There are 41 main paragraphs which need to be summarised in one sentence.
SUMMARISE WRITTEN TEXT -
1) a) During the time of the Aztecs, cocoa was mainly used as a beverage. Wines and drinks were made from white pulp around the seeds of the cocoa pod. The beans themselves were used to make hot or cold chocolate drinks.
Both the Maya and the Aztec secular drinks used roasted cocoa beans, a foaming agent (sugar), toasted corn and water. Vanilla and/or chilli were also used as an ingredient in the drinks. Cocoa beans were also used as a currency and as a tribute (tax) from peoples ruled by Aztecs. The oily layer floating in the chocolate drink (cocoa butter) was used to protect the skin against the sun.
For the Aztecs cocoa had a religious significance. Cocoa was believed to be of divine origin: the cocoa tree was a bridge between earth and heaven. Human sacrifices to propitiate God or sun were first sanctified by giving him chocolate. Cocoa beans were given to priest's assistants at children's coming of age ceremonies. During marriage ceremonies, the couple drank a symbolic cup of chocolate and exchanged cocoa beans. Aztecs believed that drinking chocolate gave mortals some of Quetzalcoatl's (God of learning and of the wind) wisdom.
1) b) So, just how does your order of birth affect your parenting? One typical force at work is the tendency for a parent to over identify with the child in the same birth-order position. This can lead to putting too much pressure on the child or spoiling or favouring the child.
When I interacted with our first three children while they were growing up, whose antics did I enjoy the most? Kevin Il - our baby, of course. For example, when Holly was 13 and Krissy was 11 and they would complain to me about 7-year-old Kevey and his pestering ways, I would say, "Well, girls, let's remember he's the baby of the family. Little baby brothers do that
kind of thing to sisters." I identified with Kevin. Do you think Holly and Krissy picked up on that? You bet they did.
In my case, I was over identifying with my lastborn in an indulging way because, as a baby of the family myself, I loved to pester my older sisters and brother when I was small. But let me be clear that overidentification can also be done in a non-indulgent, hard-line way, particularly when both parents are firstborns. This almost guarantees that the parents will have what I call "the critical eye." Instead of overindulging their firstborn child, they'll probably be extra hard on him or her as they exert their own exacting standards.
1) c). Orville and Wilbur Wright were brothers living in Dayton, Ohio. The two had started making bicycles during the 1890s and had a successful small business selling their Wright Specials for $18 each ($475 in today's green). This experience with building light, strong machines would prove valuable in the coming years after the brothers' interest turned to flight.
Others in the United States were also developing aircraft at the time the Wright brothers started turning their curiosity skyward. Samuel Langley had flown an unmanned steam-powered aircraft in 1896. Octave Chanute and others were flying gliders near Chicago late in the decade as well. But it wasn't until the Wright brothers started working on the matter that the "flying problem" would finally be solved.
Beginning in 1899, the brothers designed and built a series of gliders to test their various ideas on a flying machine. They constructed a wind tunnel that allowed them to test designs without having to build a full-size model. They even built their own gasoline-powered motor for their aircraft.
1. d) We live in an ageing world. While this has been recognized for some time in developed countries, it is only recently that this phenomenon has been fully acknowledged. Global communication is "shrinking" the world, and global ageing is "maturing" it. The increasing presence of older persons in the world is making people of all ages more aware that we live in a diverse and multigenerational society. It is no longer possible to ignore ageing, regardless of whether one views it positively or negatively.
Demographers note that if current trends in ageing continue as predicted, a demographic revolution, wherein the proportions of the young and the old will undergo a historic crossover, will be felt in just three generations. This portrait of change in the world's population parallels the magnitude of the industrial revolution - traditionally considered the most significant social and economic breakthrough in the history of humankind since the Neolithic period. It marked the beginning of a sustained movement towards modern economic growth in much the same way that globalization is today marking an unprecedented and sustained movement toward a "global culture". The demographic revolution, it is envisaged, will be at least as powerful.
While the future effects are not known, a likely scenario is one where both the challenges as well as the opportunities will emerge from a vessel into which exploration and research, dialogue and debate are poured. Challenges arise as social and economic structures try to adjust to the simultaneous phenomenon of diminishing young cohorts with rising older ones, and opportunities present themselves in the sheer number of older individuals and the vast resources societies stand to gain from their contribution.
This ageing of the population permeates all social, economic and cultural spheres. Revolutionary change calls for new, revolutionary thinking, which can position policy formulation and implementation on sounder footing. In our ageing world, new thinking requires that we view ageing as a lifelong and society-wide phenomenon, not a phenomenon exclusively pertaining to older persons.
2. Males do the singing and females do the listening. This has been the established, even cherished view of courtship in birds, but now some ornithologists are changing tune.
Laszlo Garamszegi of the University of Antwerp, Belgium, and colleagues studied the literature on 233 European songbird species. Of the 109 for which information on females was available, they found evidence for singing in 101 species. In only eight species could the team conclude that females did not sing.
Females that sing have been overlooked, the team say, because either their songs are quiet, they are mistaken for males from their similar plumage or they live in less well- studied areas such as the tropics. Garamszegi blames Charles Darwin for the oversight. "He emphasised the importance of male sexual display, and this is what everyone has been looking at."
The findings go beyond modern species. After carefully tracing back an evolutionary family tree for their songbirds, Garamszegi's team discovered that, in at least two bird families, singing evolved in females first. They suggest these ancient females may have been using their songs to deter other females from their territories, to coordinate breeding activities with males, or possibly to attract mates.
"It leaves us with a perplexing question," says Garamszegi. 'What evolutionary forces drove some females to give up singing?"
Before people believed that male sings and female listen, traditionally studies normally focus on male as they are more important in xx areas. After examined the family tree of songbird, at least two female sings for surviving reasons.
3. Males do the singing and females do the listening. This has been the established, even cherished view of courtship in birds, but now some ornithologists are changing tune.
Laszlo Garamszegi of the University of Antwerp, Belgium, and colleagues studied the literature on 233 European songbird species. Of the 109 for which information on females was available, they found evidence for singing in 101 species. In only eight species could the team conclude that females did not sing.
Females that sing have been overlooked, the team say, because either their songs are quiet, they are mistaken for males from their similar plumage or they live in less well- studied areas such as the tropics. Garamszegi blames Charles Darwin for the oversight. "He emphasised the importance of male sexual display, and this is what everyone has been looking at."
The findings go beyond modern species. After carefully tracing back an evolutionary family tree for their songbirds, Garamszegi's team discovered that, in at least two bird families, singing evolved in females first. They suggest these ancient females may have been using their songs to deter other females from their territories, to coordinate breeding activities with males, or possibly to attract mates.
4. Diasporas - communities which live outside, but maintain links with, their homelands - are getting larger, thicker and stronger. They are the human face of globalization. Diaspora consciousness is on the rise: diasporans are becoming more interested in their origins, and organising themselves more effectively; homelands are revising their opinions of their diasporas as the stigma attached to emigration declines, and stepping up their engagement efforts; meanwhile, host countries are witnessing more assertive diasporic groups within their own national communities, worrying about fifth columns and foreign lobbies, and suffering outbreaks of 'diasporaphobia'.
This trend is the result of five factors, all of them connected with globalisation: the growth in international migration; the revolution in transport and communications technology, which is quickening the pace of diasporans' interactions with their homelands; a reaction against global homogenised culture, which is leading people to rethink their identities; the end of the Cold War, which increased the salience of ethnicity and nationalism and created new space in which diasporas can operate; and policy changes by national governments on issues such as dual citizenship and multiculturalism, which are enabling people to lead transnational lives. Diasporas such as those attaching to China, India, Russia and Mexico are already big, but they will continue to grow; the migration flows which feed them are likely to widen and quicken in the future.
5. San , people of southern Africa, consisting of several groups and numbering over 85,000 in all. They are generally short in stature; their skin is yellowish brown in color; and they feature prominent cheekbones. The San have been called Bushmen by whites in South Africa, but the term is now considered derogatory. Although many now work for white settlers, about half are still nomadic hunters and gatherers of wild food in desolate areas like the Kalahari semi-desert, which streches between todays Nation States of Botswana, Namibia and South Africa. Their social unit is the small hunting band; larger organizations are loose and temporary. Grashuts, caves and rock shelters are used as dwellings. They possess only what they can carry, using poisoned arrowheads to fell game and transporting water in ostrich-egg shells. The San have a rich folklore, are skilled in drawing, and have a remarkably complex language characterized by the use of click sounds, related to that of the Khoikhoi . For thousands of years the San lived in southern and central Africa, but by the time of the Portuguese arrival in the 15th cent., they had already been forced into the interior of southern Africa. In the 18th and 19th cent., they resisted the encroachment on their lands of Dutch settlers, but by 1862 that resistance had been crushed.
6. When Namibia gained independence in 1990, teenager Pascolena Florry was herding goats in the country's dry, desolate northern savannah. Her job, unpaid and dangerous, was to protect her parents' livestock from preying jackals and leopards.
She saw wildlife as the enemy, and many of the other indigenous inhabitants of Namibia's rural communal lands shared her view. Wildlife poaching was commonplace. Fifteen years later, 31-year-old Pascolena's life and outlook are very different. She has built a previously undreamed-of career in tourism and is the first black Namibian to be appointed manager of a guest lodge. Her village, and hundreds of others, have directly benefited from government efforts to devolve wildlife management and tourism development on communal lands to conservancies run by indigenous peoples. "Now we see the wildlife as our way of creating jobs and opportunities as the tourism industry grows," she also says. "The future is better with wildlife around, not only for jobs, but also for the environment"
7. As far as prediction is concerned, remember that the chairman of IBM predicted in the fifties that the world would need a maximum of around half a dozen computers, that the British Department for Education seemed to think in the eighties that we would all need to be able to code in BASIC and that in the nineties Microsoft failed to foresee the rapid growth of the Internet. Who could have predicted that one major effect of the automobile would be to bankrupt small shops across the nation?
Could the early developers of the telephone have foreseen its development as a medium for person-to-person communication, rather than as a form of broadcasting medium? We all, including the 'experts', seem to be peculiarly inept at predicting the likely development of our technologies, even as far as the next year. We can, of course, try to extrapolate from experience of previous technologies, as I do below by comparing the technology of the Internet with the development of other information and communication technologies and by examining the earlier development of radio and print. But how justified I might be in doing so remains an open question.
You might conceivably find the history of the British and French videotex systems, Prestel and Minitel, instructive. However, I am not entirely convinced that they are very relevant, nor do I know where you can find information about them on-line, so, rather than take up space here, I've briefly described them in a separate article.
8. far as prediction is concerned, remember that the chairman of IBM predicted in the fifties that the world would need a maximum of around half a dozen computers, BASIC and that in the nineties Microsoft failed to foresee the rapid growth of the Internet. Who could have predicted that one major effect of the automobile would be to bankrupt small shops across the nation? Could the early developers of the telephone have foreseen its development as a medium for person-to-person communication, rather than as a form of broadcasting medium? We all, including the 'experts', seem to be peculiarly inept at predicting the likely development of our technologies, even as far as the next year. We can, of course, try to extrapolate from experience of previous technologies, as I do below by comparing the technology of the Internet with the development of other information and communication technologies and by examining the earlier development of radio and print. But how justified I might be in doing so remains an open question.
9. Live in the country and last three years longer than my city friends? Good news indeed, more backing for a lifestyle choice made half a lifetime ago when it seemed a good idea to exchange an Edinburgh terrace for a farm cottage.
I knew it was a good idea because I had been there before. Born and reared on a farm I had been seduced for a few years by the idea of being a big shot who lived and worked in a city rather than only going for the day to wave at the buses.
True, I was familiar with some of the minor disadvantages of country living such as an iffy private water supply sometimes infiltrated by a range of flora and fauna (including, on one memorable occasion, a dead lamb), the absence of central heating in farm houses and cottages, and a single-track farm road easily blocked by snow, broken-down machinery or escaped livestock.
But there were many advantages as I told Liz back in the mid-Seventies. Town born and bred, eight months pregnant and exchanging a warm, substantial Corstorphine terrace for a windswept farm cottage on a much lower income, persuading her that country had it over town might have been difficult.
10. Why and to what extent should parents control their children's TV watching? There is certainly nothing inherently wrong with TV. The problem is how much television a child watches and what effect it has on his life. Research has shown that as the amount of time spent watching TV goes up, the amount of time devoted not only to homework and study but other important aspects of life such as social development and physical activities decreases.
Television is bound to have it tremendous impact on a child, both in terms of how many hours a week he watches TV and of what he sees. When a parent is concerned about the effects of watching television, he should consider a number of things: what TV offers the child in terms of information and knowledge, how many hours a week a youngster his age should watch television, the impact of violence and sex, and the influence of commercials.
What about the family as a whole? Is the TV set a central piece of furniture in your home! Is it flicked on the moment someone enters the empty house? Is it on during the daytime? Is it part of the background noise of your family life? Do you demonstrate by your own viewing that television should be watched selectively?
Since television is clearly here to stay. it is important that parents manage their children's TV viewing so that it can be a plus rather than a minus in the family situation.
11. Armed police have been brought into NSW schools to reduce crime rates and educate students. The 40 School Liaison Police (SLP) officers have been allocated to public and private high schools across the state.
Organizers say the officers, who began work last week, will build positive relationships between police and students. But parent groups warned of potential dangers of armed police working at schools in communities where police relations were already under strain.
Among their duties, the SLPs will conduct crime prevention workshops, talking to students about issues including shoplifting, offensive behaviour, graffiti and drugs and alcohol. They can also advise school principals. One SLP, Constable Ben Purvis, began to work in the inner Sydney region last week, including at Alexandria Park Community School's senior campus. Previously stationed as a crime prevention officer at The Rocks, he now has 27 schools under his jurisdiction in areas including The Rocks, Redfern and Kings Cross.
Constable Purvis said the full-time position would see him working on the broader issues of crime prevention. "I am not a security guard," he said. "I am not there to patrol the school.
We want to improve relationships between police and schoolchildren, to have positive interaction. We are coming to the school and giving them knowledge to improve their own safety."
The use of fake ID among older students is among the issues he has already discussed with principals.
Parents' groups responded to the program positively, but said it may spark a range of community reactions.
"It is a good thing and an innovative idea and there could be some positive benefits," Council of Catholic School Parents executive officer
Danielle Cronin said. "Different communities will respond to this kind of presence in different ways."
12. Here's how tree ring dating, known to scientists as dendrochronology (from the Greek roots Dendron = tree, and chronos = time), works. If you cut a tree down today, it's straightforward to count the rings inwards, starting from the tree's outside (corresponding to this year's growth ring), and thereby to state that the 177th ring from the outermost one towards the centre was laid down in the year 2005 minus 177, or 1828. However, the widths of tree growth rings vary from year to year, depending on the rain or drought conditions in each year.
Hence the sequence of the rings in a tree cross-section is like a message in Morse code formerly used for sending telegraph messages; dot-dot-dash-dot-dash in the Morse code, wide-wide-narrow-wide-narrow in the tree ring sequence. Actually the tree ring sequence is even more diagnostic and richer in information than the Morse code, because trees actually contain rings spanning many different width, rather than the Morse code choice between dot and dash.
Tree ring specialists (known as dendrochronologists) proceed by noting the sequence of wider and narrower rings in a tree cut down in a known recent year, and also noting the sequences in beams from trees cut down at various times in the past. They then match up and align the tree ring sequences with the same diagnostic wide/narrow patterns from different beams.
In that way, dendrochronologists have constructed tree ring records extending back for thousands of years in some parts of the world. Each record is valid for a geographic area whose extent depends on local weather patterns, because weather and hence tree growth patterns vary with location.
A bonus of dendrochronology is that the width and substructure of each ring reflects the amount of rain and the season at which the rain fell during that particular year.
Thus, tree ring studies also allow one to reconstruct the past climate, e.g., a series of wide rings means a very wet period, and a series of narrow rings means a drought.
13. Jobs generated by Travel & Tourism are spread across the economy - in retail, construction, manufacturing and telecommunications, as well as directly in Travel & Tourism companies. These jobs employ a large proportion of women, minorities and young people; are predominantly in small and medium sized companies; and offer good training and transferability. Tourism can also be one of the most effective drivers for the development of regional economies. These patterns apply to both developed and emerging economies.
There are numerous good examples of where Travel & Tourism is acting as a catalyst for conservation and improvement of the environment and maintenance of local diversity and culture. Travel & Tourism creates jobs and wealth and has tremendous potential to contribute to economically, environmentally and socially sustainable development in both developed countries and emerging nations. It has a comparative advantage in that its start up and running costs can be low compared to many other forms of industry development. It is also often one of the few realistic options for development in many areas. Therefore, there is a strong likelihood that the Travel & Tourism industry will continue to grow globally over the short to medium term.
14. What is text/written language anyway? It's an ancient IT for storing and retrieving information. We store information by writing it, and we retrieve it by reading it.
Six thousand to 10,000 years ago, many of our ancestors' hunter-gatherer societies settled on the land and began what's known as the agricultural revolution. That new land settlement led to private property and increased production and trade of goods, generating a huge new influx of information. Unable to keep all this information in their memories, our ancestors created systems of written records that evolved over millennia into today's written languages.
But this ancient IT is already becoming obsolete. Text has run its historic course and it now rapidly getting replaced in every area of our lives by the ever-increasing array of emerging ITs driven by voice, video, and body movement rather than the written word. In my view, this is a positive step forward in the evolution of human technology, and it carries great potential for a total positive redesign of K-12 education.
15. Human remains are a fundamental part of the archaeological record, offering unique insights into the lives of individuals and populations in the past. Recently a new set of challenges to the study of human remains has emerged from a rather unexpected direction: the British government revised its interpretation of nineteenth- century burial legislation in a way that would drastically curtail the ability of archaeologists to study human remains of any age excavated in England and Wales. This paper examines these extraordinary events and the legal, political and ethical questions that they raise.
In April 2008, the British government announced that, henceforth, all human remains archaeologically excavated in England and Wales should be reburied after a two-year period of scientific analysis. Not only would internationally important prehistoric remains have to be returned to the ground, removing them from public view, but also there would no longer be any possibility of long-term scientific investigation as new techniques and methods emerged and developed in the future. Thus, while faunal remains, potsherds, artefacts and environmental samples could be analysed and re- analysed in future years, human remains were to be effectively removed from the curation process. Archaeologists and other scientists were also concerned that this might be the first step towards a policy of reburying all human remains held in museum collections in England and Wales including prehistoric, Roman, Saxon, Viking and Medieval as well as more recent remains.
16. The ways of life of Upper Palaeolithic people are known through the remains of meals scattered around their hearths, together with many tools and weapons and the debris left over from their making. The people were hunter-gatherers who lived exclusively from what they could find in nature without practising either agriculture or herding. They hunted the bigger herbivores, while berries, leaves, roots, wild fruit and mushrooms probably played a major role in their diet. Their hunting was indiscriminate, perhaps because so many animals were about that they did not need to spare pregnant females or the young. In the cave of Enlene, for example, many bones of reindeer and bison foetuses were found. Apparently, Upper Palaeolithic people hunted like other predators and killed the weakest prey first. They did, however, sometimes concentrate on salmon runs and migrating herds of reindeer.
Contrary to popular beliefs about 'cave men', Upper Palaeolithic people did not live deep inside caves. They rather chose the foot of cliffs, especially when an overhang provided good shelter. On the plains and in the valleys, they used tents made from hides of the animals they killed. At times, on the great Russian plains, they built huts with huge bones and tusks collected from the skeletons of mammoths.
(Men hunted mostly with spears; the bow and arrow was probably not invented until the Magdalenian period that came at the end of the Upper Palaeolithic. Tools and weapons, made out of wood or reindeer antlers, often had flint cutting edges. Flint knappers were skilful and traditions in flint knapping were pursued for thousands of years. This continuity means that they must have been carefully taught how to find good flint nodules and how to knap them in order to make knives, burins (chisel-like tools) or scrapers, which could be used for various purposes.
17. Consider the current situation: Like their counterparts in the United States, engineers and technicians in India have the capacity to provide both computer programming and innovative new technologies. Indian programmers and high-tech engineers earn one- quarter of what their counterparts earn in the United States. Consequently, India is able to do both jobs at a lower dollar cost than the United States: India has an absolute advantage in both. In other words, it can produce a unit of programming for fewer dollars than the United States, and it can also produce a unit of technology innovation for fewer dollars. Does that mean that the United States will lose not only programming jobs but innovative technology jobs, too? Does that mean that our standard of living will fall if the United States and India engage in international trade?
David Ricardo would have answered no to both questions-as we do today. While India may have an absolute advantage in both activities, that fact is irrelevant in determining what India or the United States will produce. India has a comparative advantage in doing programming in part because such activity requires little physical capital. The flip side is that the United States has a comparative advantage in technology innovation partly because it is relatively easy to obtain capital in this country to undertake such long-run projects. The result is that Indian programmers will do more and more of what U.S. programmers have been doing in the past. In contrast, American firms will shift to more and more innovation. The United States will specialize in technology innovation; India will specialize in programming. The business man-agers in each country will opt to specialize in activities in which they have a comparative advantage. As in the past, the U.S. economy will continue to concentrate on what are called the "most best" activities.
18. Parents' own birth order can become an issue when dynamics in the family they are raising replicate the family in which they were raised. Agati notes common examples, such as a firstborn parent getting into "raging battles" with a firstborn child. "Both are used to getting the last word. Each has to be right. But the parent has to be the grown- up and step out of that battle," he advises. When youngest children become parents, Agati cautions that because they "may not have had high expectations placed on them, they in turn may not see their kids for their abilities."
But he also notes that since youngest children tend to be more social, "youngest parents can be helpful to their firstborn, who may have a harder time with social situations. These parents can help their eldest kids loosen up and not be so hard on themselves. Mom Susan Ritz says her own birth order didn't seem to affect her parenting until the youngest of her three children, Julie, was born. Julie was nine years younger than Ritz's oldest, Joshua, mirroring the age difference between Susan and her own older brother. "I would see Joshua do to Julie what my brother did to me," she says of the taunting and teasing by a much older sibling.
"I had to try not to always take Julie's side." Biases can surface no matter what your own birth position was, as Lori Silverstone points out. "As a middle myself, I can be harder on my older daughter. I recall my older sister hitting me," she says of her reactions to her daughters' tussles.
"My husband is a firstborn. He's always sticking up for the oldest. He feels bad for her that the others came so fast. He helps me to see what that feels like, to have that attention and then lose it." Silverstone sees birth-order triggers as "an opportunity to heal parts of ourselves. I've learned to teach my middle daughter to stand up for herself.
My mother didn't teach me that. I'm conscious of giving my middle daughter tools so she has a nice way to protect herself."
Whether or not you subscribe to theories that birth order can affect your child's personality, ultimately, "we all have free will," Agati notes. It's important for both parents and kids to realize that, despite the characteristics often associated with birth order, "you're not locked into any role."
19. Since Australians Jennifer Hawkins and Lauryn Eagle were crowned Miss Universe and Miss Teen International respectively, there has been a dramatic increase in interest in beauty pageants in this country. These wins have also sparked a debate as to whether beauty pageants are just harmless reminders of old-fashioned values or a throwback to the days when women were respected for how good they looked.
Opponents argue that beauty pageants, whether it's Miss Universe or Miss Teen International, are demeaning to women and out of sync with the times. They say they are nothing more than symbols of decline.
In the past, few decades Australia has taken more than a few faltering steps toward treating women with dignity and respect. Young women are being brought up knowing that they can do anything, as shown by inspiring role models in medicine such as 2003 Australian of the Year Professor Fiona Stanley.
In the 1960s and 70s, one of the first acts of the feminist movement was to picket beauty pageants on the premise that the industry promoted the view that it was acceptable to judges women on their appearance. Today many young Australian women are still profoundly uncomfortable with their body image, feeling under all kinds of pressures because they are judged by how they look.
Almost all of the pageant victors are wafer thin, reinforcing the message that thin equals beautiful. This ignores the fact that men and women come in all sizes and shapes. In a country where up to 60% of young Australians.
20. According to new research, house mice (Mus musculus) are ideal biomarkers of human settlement, as they tend to stow away in crates or on ships that end up going where people go. Using mice as a proxy for human movement can add to what is already known through archaeological data and answer important questions in areas where there is a lack of artifacts, Searle said.
Where people go, so do mice, often stowing away in carts of hay or on ships. Despite a natural range of just 100 meters (109 yards) and an evolutionary base near Pakistan, the house mouse has managed to colonize every continent, which makes it a useful tool for researchers like Searle.
Previous research conducted by Searle at the University of York supported the theory that Australian mice originated in the British Isles and probably came over with convicts shipped there to colonize the continent in the late 18th and 19th centuries.
In the Viking study, he and his fellow researchers in Iceland, Denmark and Sweden took it a step further, using ancient mouse DNA collected from archaeological sites dating from the 10th to 12th centuries, as well as modern mice.
He is hoping to do just that in his next project, which involves tracking the migration of mice and other species, including plants, across the Indian Ocean, from South Asia to East Africa.
21. All non-human animals are constrained by the tools that nature has bequeathed them through natural selection. They are not capable of striving towards truth; they simply absorb information, and behave in ways useful for their survival. The kinds of knowledge they require of the world have been largely pre-selected by evolution. No animal is capable of asking questions or generating problems that are irrelevant to its immediate circumstances or its evolutionarily-designed needs. When a beaver builds a dam, it doesn't ask itself why it does so, or whether there is a better way of doing it. When a swallow flies south, it doesn't wonder why it is hotter in Africa or what would happen if it flew still further south.
Humans do ask themselves these and many other kinds of questions, questions that have no relevance, indeed make little sense, in the context of evolved needs and goals. What marks out humans is our capacity to go beyond our naturally-defined goals such as the need to find food, shelter or a mate and to establish human-created goals.
Some contemporary thinkers tend to believe that there are indeed certain questions that humans are incapable of answering because of our evolved nature. Steven Pinker, for instance, argues that "Our minds evolved by natural selection to solve problems that were life-and-death matters to our ancestors, not to commune with correctness or to answer any question we are capable of asking. We cannot hold ten thousand words in our short-term memory. We cannot see ultra-violet light. We cannot mentally rotate an object in the fourth dimension. And perhaps we cannot solve conundrums like free will and sentience."
22. The notion that office space has a role in promoting or inhibiting performance is backed up by solid research. A recent study conducted by Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital showed that improvements to the physical surroundings of workers impacted on productivity not just because the working environment was more attractive, but because the changes made cared for. A Swedish research paper revealed a strong link between the type of office an employee worked in and their overall job satisfaction and health. Various findings have emerged as a result of studies such as this. Pot plants and greenery can apparently have a real impact on psychological well-being. Those who work in private room tend to be in better health than workers based in open-plan offices. Sufficient light can reduce sickness among workers and increase productivity; and an attractive office can make workers feel more cared for and therefore more loyal to their company. Most of these points make good rational Sense. But some companies aren't content simply to increase the health, productivity and contentment of their employees. Pioneers such as Google, Walt Disney and Dyson have tried to create offices that will do everything from promoting collaboration between workers to stimulating their creative juices. "Environment, both physical and cultural. can make or break creativity", says Kursty Groves, author of I Wish I Worked There! A Look Inside the Most Creative Spaces in Business. "Stimulating spaces expose the mind to a variety of stimuli - planned or random, in order to encourage people to think differently. Reflective spaces promote the filtering of information into the brain. slowing it to make connect. An environment which encourages a team to build trust and to play freely is an essential ingredient for innovation."
23. Who would have thought back in 1698, as they downed their espressos, that the little band of stockbrokers from Jonathan's Coffee House in Change Alley EC3 would be the founder- members of what would become the world's mighty money capital?
Progress was not entirely smooth. The South Sea Bubble burst in 1720 and the coffee house exchanges burned down in 1748. As late as Big Bang in 1986, when bowler hats were finally hung up, you wouldn't have bet the farm on London surpassing New York, Frankfurt and Tokyo as Mammon's international nexus. Yet the 325,000 souls who operate in the UK capital's financial hub have now overtaken their New York rivals in size of the funds managed (including offshore business); they hold 70% of the global secondary bond market and the City dominates the foreign exchange trading.
And its institutions paid out £9 billion in bonuses in December. The Square Mile has now spread both eastwards from EC3 to Canary Wharf and westwards into Mayfair, where many of the private-equity 'locusts' and their hedge-fund pals now hang out. For foreigners in finance, London is the place to be. It has no Sarbanes-Oxley and no euro to hold it back, yet the fact that it still flies so high is against the odds. London is one of the most expensive cities in the world to live in, transport systems groan and there's an ever-present threat of terrorist attack. But, for the time being, the deals just keep on getting bigger.
24. The history of marketers seeking the advice of physicists is a short one, but an understanding of the Theory of Resonance may give communications experts the edge. Resonance Theory explains the curious phenomenon of how very small pebbles dropped into a pond can create bigger waves than a large brick. The brick makes a decent splash but its ripples peter out quickly. A tiny pebble dropped into the same pond, followed by another, then another, then another, all timed carefully, will create ripples that build into small waves.
As Dr Carlo Contaldi, a physicist at Imperial College London, explains, a small amount of energy committed at just the right intervals - the 'natural frequency' - creates a cumulatively large effect.
Media consultant Paul Bay believes that just as with pebbles in a pond, a carefully choreographed and meticulously timed stream of communication will have a more lasting effect than a sporadic big splash during prime-time TV breaks.
Innocent is testament to the power of pebbles. Until last year, the maker of smoothies had never advertised on TV, instead drip-feeding the market with endless ingenious marketing ploys - from annotating its drinks labels with quirky messages to hosting its own music festival, Fruit stock. The company sent a constant stream of messages rather than communicating through the occasional big and expensive noise.
So, whether you're trying to make waves in the laboratory or in the media, the people in white coats would advise a little and often. A big budget is not the prerequisite of success.
25. Spurred by the sense that disorderly behaviour among students in South Euclid was increasing, the school resource officer (SRO) reviewed data regarding referrals to the principal's office. He found that the high school reported thousands of referrals a year for bullying and that the junior high school had recently experienced a 30 percent increase in bullying referrals. Police data showed that juvenile complaints about disturbances, bullying, and assaults after school hours had increased 90 percent in the past 10 years.
A researcher from Kent State University (Ohio) conducted a survey of all students attending the junior high and high school. Interviews and focus groups were conducted with students-identified as victims or offenders- teachers, and guidance counsellors. Finally, the South Euclid Police Department purchased a Geographic Information System to conduct crime incident mapping of hotspots within the schools. The main findings pointed to four primary areas of concern: the environmental design of the school; teacher knowledge of and response to the problem; parental attitudes and responses; and student perspectives and behaviours.
The SRO worked in close collaboration with a social worker and the university researcher. They coordinated a Response Planning Team comprising many stakeholders that was intended to respond to each of the areas identified in the initial analysis. Environmental changes included modifying the school schedule and increasing teacher supervision of hotspots. Counsellors and social workers conducted teacher training courses in conflict resolution and bullying prevention. Parent education included mailings with information about bullying, an explanation of the new school policy, and a discussion about what could be done at home to address the problems. Finally, student education included classroom discussions between homeroom teachers and students, as well as assemblies conducted by the SRO. The SRO also opened a substation next to a primary hotspot. The Ohio Department of Education contributed by opening a new training centre to provide a non-traditional setting for specialized help.
The results from the various responses were dramatic. School suspensions decreased 40 percent. Bullying incidents dropped 60 percent in the hallways and 80 percent in the gym area. Follow-up surveys indicated that there were positive attitudinal changes among students about bullying and that more students felt confident that teachers would take action when a problem arose. Teachers indicated that training sessions were helpful and that they were more likely to talk about bullying as a serious issue.
Parents responded positively, asking for more information about the problem in future mailings. The overall results suggest that the school environments were not only safer, but that early intervention was helping at-risk students succeed in school.
26. Some of this panic is overdone-and linked to the business cycle: there was much ado about "a war for talent" in America in the 1990s, until the dotcom bubble burst. People often talk about shortages when they should really be discussing price. Eventually, supply will rise to meet demand and the market will adjust. But, while you wait, your firm might go bust. For the evidence is that the talent shortage is likely to get worse.
Nobody really disputes the idea that the demand for talent-intensive skills is rising. The value of "intangible" assets-everything from skilled workers to patents to know- how-has ballooned from 20% of the value of companies in the S&P 500 to 70% today. The proportion of American workers doing jobs that call for complex skills has grown three times as fast as employment in general. As other economies move in the same direction, the global demand is rising quickly.
As for supply, the picture in much of the developed world is haunted by demography. By 2025 the number of people aged 15-64 is projected to fall by 7% in Germany, 9% in Italy and 14% in Japan. Even in still growing America, the imminent retirement of the baby-boomers means that companies will lose large numbers of experienced workers in a short space of time (by one count half the top people at America's 500 leading companies will go in the next five years). Meanwhile, two things are making it much harder for companies to adjust.
The first is the collapse of loyalty. Companies happily chopped out layers of managers during the 1990s; now people are likely to repay them by moving to the highest bidder. The second is the mismatch between what schools are producing and what companies need. In most Western countries schools are churning out too few scientists and engineers-and far too many people who lack the skills to work in a modern economy (that's why there are talent shortages at the top alongside structural unemployment for the low-skilled).
27. They call it the "marshmallow test." A four- to six-year-old-child sits alone in a room at a table facing a marshmallow on a plate. The child is told: "If you don't eat this treat for 15 minutes you can have both it and a second one." Kids on average wait for five or six minutes before eating the marshmallow. The longer a child can resist the treat has been correlated with higher general competency later in life.
Now a study shows that ability to resist temptation isn't strictly innate-it's also highly influenced by environment.
Researchers gave five-year-olds used crayons and one sticker to decorate a sheet of paper. One group was promised a new set of art supplies for the project-but then never received it. But the other group did receive new crayons and better stickers.
Then both groups were given the marshmallow test. The children who had been lied to waited for a mean time of three minutes before eating the marshmallow. The group that got their promised materials resisted an average of 12 minutes.
Thus, the researchers note that experience factors into a child's ability to delay gratification. When previous promises have been hollow, why believe the next one?
28. What is the solution for nations with increasing energy demands, hindered by frequent power cuts and an inability to compete in the international oil market? For East Africa at least, experts think geothermal energy is the answer. More promising still, the Kenyan government and international investors seem to be listening. This is just in time according to many, as claims of an acute energy crisis are afoot due to high oil prices, population spikes and droughts.
Currently over 60% of Kenya's power comes from hydroelectric sources but these are proving increasingly unreliable as the issue of seasonal variation is intensified by erratic rain patterns. Alternative energy sources are needed; and the leading energy supplier in Kenya, Kenya Electricity Generating Company (KenGen), hopes to expand its geothermal energy supply from 13% to 25 % of its total usage by 2020. The potential of geothermal energy in the region was first realised internationally by the United Nations Development Program, when geologists observed thermal anomalies below the East African Rift system. Locals have been utilising this resource for centuries; using steam vents to create the perfect humidity for greenhouses, or simply to enjoy a swim in the many natural hot lakes.
Along the 6000 km of the rift from the Red Sea to Mozambique, geochemical, geophysical and heat flow measurements were made to identify areas suitable for geothermal wells. One area lies next to the extinct Olkaria volcano, within the Hell's Gate National Park, and sits over some of the thinnest continental crust on Earth. This is a result of the thinning of the crust by tectonic stretching, causing hotter material below the Earth's surface to rise, resulting in higher temperatures. This thin crust was ideal for the drilling of geothermal wells, reaching depths of around 3000 m, where temperatures get up to 342°C, far higher than the usual temperature of 90°C at this depth. Water in the surrounding rocks is converted to steam by the heat. The steam can be used to drive turbines and produce electricity. Wells like those in Olkaria operate by pumping cold water down to permeable 'geothermal reservoir' rocks, causing steam to rise back up a nearby production well. Care must be taken with the rate at which cold water is added so as to not permanently cool the source rock.
29. What is text/written language anyway? It's an ancient IT for storing and retrieving information. We store information by writing it, and we retrieve it by reading it.
Six thousand to 10,000 years ago, many of our ancestors' hunter-gatherer societies settled on the land and began what's known as the agricultural revolution. That new land settlement led to private property and increased production and trade of goods, generating a huge new influx of information. Unable to keep all this information in their memories, our ancestors created systems of written records that evolved over millennia into today's written languages.
But this ancient IT is already becoming obsolete. Text has run its historic course and it now rapidly getting replaced in every area of our lives by the ever-increasing array of emerging ITs driven by voice, video, and body movement rather than the written word. In my view, this is a positive step forward in the evolution of human technology, and it carries great potential for a total positive redesign of K-12 education.
30. When an individual drives a car, heats a house, or uses an aerosol hair spray, greenhouse gases are produced. In economic terms, this creates a classic negative externality. Most of the costs (in this case, those arising from global warming) are borne by individuals other than the one making the decision about how many miles to drive or how much hair spray to use. Because the driver (or sprayer) enjoys all the benefits of the activity but suffers only a part of the cost, that individual engages in more than the economically efficient amount of the activity. In this sense, the problem of greenhouse gases parallels the problems that occurs when someone smokes a cigarette in an enclosed space or litters the countryside with fast-food wrappers. If we are to get individuals to reduce production of greenhouse gases to the efficient rate, we must somehow induce them to act as though they bear all the costs of their actions. The two most widely accepted means of doing this are government regulation and taxation, both of which have been proposed to deal with greenhouse gases.
31. In its periodic quest for culinary identity, Australia automatically looks to its indigenous ingredients, the foods that are native to this country. 'There can be little doubt that using an indigenous product must qualify a dish as Australian', notes Stephanie Alexander. Similarly, and without qualification, Cherikoff states that 'A uniquely Australian food culture can only be based upon foods indigenous to this country', although, as Craw remarks, proposing Australian native foods as national symbols relies more upon their association with 'nature' and geographic origin than on common usage. Notwithstanding the lack of justification for the premise that national dishes are, of necessity, founded on ingredients native to the country-after all, Italy's gastronomic identity is tied to the non-indigenous tomato, Thailand's to the non- indigenous chili-the reality is that Australians do not eat indigenous foods in significant quantities. The exceptions are fish, crustaceans and shellfish from oceans, rivers and lakes, most of which are unarguably unique to this country. Despite valiant and well-intentioned efforts today at promoting and encouraging the consumption of native resources, bush foods are not harvested or produced in sufficient quantities for them to be a standard component of Australian diets, nor are they generally accessible. Indigenous foods are less relevant to Australian identity today than lamb and passionfruit, both initially imported and now naturalised.
32. The co-evolutionary relationship between cows and grass is one of nature's underappreciated wonders; it also happens to be the key to understanding just about everything about modern meat. For the grasses, which have evolved to withstand the grazing of ruminants, the cow maintains and expands their habitat by preventing trees and shrubs from gaining a foothold and hogging the sunlight; the animal also spreads grass seed, plants it with his hooves, and then fertilizes it with his manure. In exchange for these services the grasses offer ruminants a plentiful and exclusive supply of lunch. For cows (like sheep, bison, and other ruminants) have evolved the special ability to convert grass- which single-stomached creatures like us can't digest-into high- quality protein. They can do this because they possess what is surely the most highly evolved digestive organ in nature: the rumen. About the size of a medicine ball, the organ is essentially a forty-five-gallon fermentation tank in which a resident population of bacteria dines on grass. Living their unseen lives at the far end of the food chain that culminates in a hamburger, these bacteria have,justlike the grasses, coevolved with the cow, whom they feed. Truly this is an excellent system for all concerned: for the grasses, for the bacteria, for the animals, and for us, the animals' eaters.
33. When Australians engage in debate about educational quality or equity, they often seem to accept that a country cannot achieve both at the same time. The lecture will present compelling international evidence that there are countries which do, though Australia is not among them.
Curriculum reforms intended to improve equity often fail to do so because they increase breadth or differentiation in offerings in a way that increases differences in quality. Further, these differences in quality often reflect differences in students' social backgrounds because the 'new' offerings are typically taken up by relatively disadvantaged students who are not served well by them. Evidence from New South Wales will be used to illustrate this point.
The need to improve the quality of education is well accepted across OECD and other countries as they seek to strengthen their human capital to underpin their modern, knowledge economies. Improved equity is also important for this purpose, since the demand for high-level skills is widespread and the opportunities for the low-skilled are diminishing.
Improved equity in education is also important for social cohesion. There are countries in which the education system seems primarily to reproduce existing social arrangements, conferring privilege where it already exists and denying it where it does not. Even in countries where the diagnosis might be less extreme, the capacity of schooling to build social cohesion is often diminished by the way in which schools separate individuals and groups. The lecture will explore ways in which an education system could provide choice, as Australian's does, while also increasing social capital and helping to increase social cohesion. The perspective will be one of lifelong learning and not just learning during the year of schooling.
34. In 1920, the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was enacted, creating yet another serious setback to the American wine industry. The National Prohibition Act, also known as the Volstead Act, prohibited the manufacture, sale, transportation, importation, exportation, delivery, or possession of intoxicating liquors for beverage purposes, and nearly destroyed what had become a thriving national industry. In 1920 there were more than seven hundred wineries in California. By the end of Prohibition there were 160.
If Prohibition had lasted only four or five years, its impact on the wine industry might have been negligible. But it continued for thirteen years, during which time grapes went underground literally and figuratively, becoming an important commodity in the criminal economy. One loophole in the Volstead Act allowed for the manufacture and sale of sacramental wines, medicinal wines for sale by pharmacists with a doctor's prescription, and medicinal wine tonics (fortified wines) sold without prescription.
Perhaps more importantly, Prohibition allowed anyone to produce up to two hundred gallons of fruit juice or cider each year. The fruit juice, which was sometimes made into concentrate, was ideal for making wine. Some of this yield found its way to bootleggers throughout America who did just that. But not for long, because the government stepped in and banned the sale of grape juice, preventing illegal wine production. Vineyards stopped being planted, and the American wine industry ground to a halt.
35. With an abundance of low-priced labor relative to the United States, it is no surprise that China, India and other developing countries specialize in the production of labor-intensive products. For similar reasons, the United States will specialize in the production of goods that are human- and physical-capital intensive because of the relative abundance of a highly-educated labor force and technically sophisticated equipment in the United States.
This division of global production should yield higher global output of both types of goods than would be the case if each country attempted to produce both of these goods itself. For example, the United States would produce more expensive labor-intensive goods because of its more expensive labor and the developing countries would produce more expensive human and physical capital-intensive goods because of their relative scarcity of these inputs. This logic implies that the United States is unlikely to be a significant global competitor in the production green technologies that are not relatively intensive in human and physical capital.
Nevertheless, during the early stages of the development of a new technology, the United States has a comparative advantage in the production of the products enabled by this innovation. However, once these technologies become well-understood and production processes are designed that can make use of less-skilled labor, production will migrate to countries with less expensive labor.
36. This year's Nobel Peace Prize justly rewards the thousands of scientists of the United Nations Climate Change Panel (the IPCC). These scientists are engaged in excellent, painstaking work that establishes exactly what the world should expect from climate change.
The other award winner, former US Vice President Al Gore, has spent much more time telling us what to fear. While the IPCC's estimates and conclusions are grounded in careful study, Gore doesn't seem to be similarly restrained.
Gore told the world in his Academy Award-winning movie (recently labelled "one- sided" and containing "scientific errors" by a British judge) to expect 20-foot sea-level rises over this century. He ignores the findings of his Nobel co-winners, the IPCC, who conclude that sea levels will rise between only a half-foot and two feet over this century, with their best expectation being about one foot. That's similar to what the world experienced over the past 150 years.
Likewise, Gore agonizes over the accelerated melting of ice in Greenland and what it means for the planet, but overlooks the IPCC's conclusion that, if sustained, the current rate of melting would add just three inches to the sea level rise by the end of the century. Gore also takes no notice of research showing that Greenland's temperatures were higher in 1941 than they are today.
Gore also frets about the future of polar bears. He claims they are drowning as their icy habitat disappears. However, the only scientific study showing any such thing indicates that four polar bears drowned because of a storm.
The politician-turned-movie maker loses sleep over a predicted rise in heat-related deaths. There's another side of the story that's inconvenient to mention: rising temperatures will reduce the number of cold spells, which are a much bigger killer than heat. The best study shows that by 2050, heat will claim 400,000 more lives, but 1.8 million fewer will die because of cold. Indeed, according to the first complete survey of the economic effects of climate change for the world, global warming will actually save lives.
37. A large new study has found that people who regularly took a siesta were significantly less likely to die of heart disease.
"Taking a nap could turn out to be an important weapon in the fight against coronary mortality," said Dimitrios Trichopoulos of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, who led the study published yesterday in the Archives of Internal Medicine.
The study of more than 23,000 Greek adults -- the biggest and best examination of the subject to date -- found that those who regularly took a midday siesta were more than 30 percent less likely to die of heart disease.
Other experts said the results are intriguing. Heart disease kills more than 650,000 Americans each year, making it the nation's No. 1 cause of death.
"It's interesting. A little siesta, a little snooze may be beneficial," said Gerald Fletcher, a cardiologist at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., speaking on behalf of the American Heart Association. "It's simple, but it has a lot of promise."
While more research is needed to confirm and explore the findings, there are several ways napping could reduce the risk of heart attacks, experts said.
"Napping may help deal with the stress of daily living," said Michael Twery, who directs the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute's National Center on Sleep Disorders Research. "Another possibility is that it is part of the normal biological rhythm of daily living. The biological clock that drives sleep and wakefulness has two cycles each day, and one of them dips usually in the early afternoon. It's possible that not engaging in napping for some people might disrupt these processes."
Researchers have long known that countries such as Greece, Italy and Spain, where people commonly take siestas, have lower rates of heart disease than would be expected. But previous studies that attempted to study the relationship between naps and heart disease have produced mixed results. The new study is first to try to fully account for factors that might confuse the findings, such as physical activity, diet and other illnesses.
38. The history of marketers seeking the advice of physicists is a short one, but an understanding of the Theory of Resonance may give communications experts the edge. Resonance Theory explains the curious phenomenon of how very small pebbles dropped into a pond can create bigger waves than a large brick. The brick makes a decent splash but its ripples peter out quickly. A tiny pebble dropped into the same pond, followed by another, then another, then another, all timed carefully, will create ripples that build into small waves.
As Dr Carlo Contaldi, a physicist at Imperial College London, explains, a small amount of energy committed at just the right intervals - the 'natural frequency' - creates a cumulatively large effect.
Media consultant Paul Bay believes that just as with pebbles in a pond, a carefully choreographed and meticulously timed stream of communication will have a more lasting effect than a sporadic big splash during prime time TV breaks.
Innocent is testament to the power of pebbles. Until last year, the maker of smoothies had never advertised on TV, instead drip-feeding the market with endless ingenious marketing ploys - from annotating its drinks labels with quirky messages to hosting its own music festival, Fruitstock. The company sent a constant stream of messages rather than communicating through the occasional big and expensive noise.
So whether you're trying to make waves in the laboratory or in the media, the people in white coats would advise a little and often. A big budget is not the prerequisite of success.
39. Naps aren't generally included in the litany of good-for-your-heart lifestyle choices recommended for lowering cardiovascular risk, but they may soon be. New research suggests a midday siesta may reduce a person's risk of death from heart disease, possibly by lowering stress levels. The findings must be confirmed, but Dimitrios Trichopoulos, MD, a study author, tells us that there is little downside to taking naps - and there could be big health benefits. "The siesta is a victim of progress. Most of us aren't in the position to take a daily nap," he says. "But our research suggests that the practice could help protect the heart, and we need further studies to find out if this really is the case."
Trichopoulos says the research stemmed from the observation that heart disease death rates are lower in Mediterranean and Latin American countries where midday siestas are part of the culture. His own earlier research in a Greek population provided weak evidence in favour of the nap hypothesis, but another, larger study, conducted in Costa Rica failed to show an association. The newly published Greek study by Trichopoulosl and colleagues from the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston, and Greece's University of Athens Medical School is the largest ever to examine the issue in a previously healthy population. A total of 23,681 residents of Greece with no history of heart disease, stroke, or cancer at enrollment were followed an average of 6.3 years. And the study revealed that people who took naps at least three times a week for average of at least 30 minutes were 37% less likely to die of heart disease than people who did not take regular naps.
40. Dendrochronology or tree ring dating is the scientific method of dating based on the analysis o3f patterns of tree rings, also known as growth rings. Dendrochronology can date the time at which tree rings were formed, in many types of wood, to the exact calendar year. This has three main areas of application: paleoecology, where it is used to determine certain aspects of past ecologists (most prominently climate) archaeology and the history of art and architecture, where it is used to date old panel paintings on wood, buildings etc.; and radiocarbon dating, where it is used to calibrate radiocarbon ages.
In some areas of the world, it is possible to date wood back a few thousand years, or even many thousands. As of 2013, fully anchored chronologies in the northern hemisphere extend back 13,900 years. Dendrochronology is more visible in temperate zones, where the seasons differ more markedly. The inner portion of a growth ring is formed early in the growing season, when growth is comparatively rapid (hence the wood is less dense) and is known as "early wood" (or "spring wood", or "late-spring wood"); the outer portion is the "late wood' (and has sometimes been termed 'summer wood", often being produced in the summer, though sometimes in the autumn) and is denser.
Many trees in temperate zones make one growth ring each year, with the newest adjacent to the bark. Hence, for the entire period of a tree's life, a year-by-year record or ring pattern is formed that reflects the age of the tree and the climatic conditions in which the tree grew. Adequate moisture and a long growing season result in a wide ring, while a drought year may result in a very narrow one.
41. India is a leading market for producing more and more software engineer who at the same time can make programming and Innovative business technologies and they are getting almost 1/5th of the salary of their counterparts in USA. Their dual ability can be seen as alarming for the future of innovative business technologies in India as compared to the United States. However, some economist claim that it would not be the case.
As we don't know what India can manufacture even after having large numbers of software engineers because when it comes to manufacturing, Capital is the main requirement and USA is quite sufficient in investment as it has investors readily available.