Social Policy Essay - 1105 Words

Examine the way in which laws and social policies affect family life From the 19th Century onwards the government have introduced different social policies in attempt to shape family life in Britain, to make it better for all family members, rather than only focusing on the traditional patriarchal Nuclear family. In 1963 the equal Pay Act was introduced, meaning that pay based on sex was abolished and men and women became more equal. This social policy created a higher standard of living as both partners would become wage earners, meaning the family was financially better off and could afford to meet all of the family’s basic needs and requirements. Women became more powerful and gained more authority due to this social policy, and†¦show more content†¦However, the New Right thinks that it â€Å"mollycoddles† children and overprotects them, as our society today is â€Å"obsessed with childhood†. The New right argue that children should be disciplined which can be done by putting them into the army through National service. This links in with the idea that the New right think smacking children is ok, as it disciplines them. Mandatory Schooling for children was introduced from 1870 onwards, making it law that children stayed in education until a specific age. In to day’s society children must stay in education until age 18. All political groups agree with compulsory schooling, as it disciplines children at a young age, and educates them to be successful later in life. In today’s society new social policies have been introduced such as the NHS (National Health Service, education and housing. Functionalists argue that the introduction of health, education and housing policies has gradually led to the development of a welfare state that then supports the family, so that the family can perform its functions better with the help of society. The existence of the NHS means that with the help of doctors, nurses, hospitals and medicines the family today is better able to take care of its family members, and enables people to live for longer. The march of progress has a similar view, as they see social policies asShow MoreRelatedEssay on Social Policy2129 Words   |  9 PagesThis essay will use the McPhail family case study. The essay will look at the Functionalism and Feminism theory in relation to the case study family and show the effects of two sociological perspectives and there importance in assisting the social care worker to understand the family. The essay will also look at social policy on how it is developed and he issues of private and public issues. This will include how four sectors of social care will aid the case study family and how these organisationsRead MoreSocial Policy Essay2182 Words   |  9 PagesUnit 7 Social Policy LO1 Understand the significant historical and contemporary landmarks in social welfare provision 1.1 Outline significant historical and contemporary landmarks in social policy. Social policy is the study of social services and the welfare state. In general terms, it looks at the idea of social welfare, and its relationship to politics and society. More specifically, it also considers detailed issues in * policy and administration of social services, includingRead MoreEssay on social policy1190 Words   |  5 PagesLevel 4 HND Diploma In Health and Social Care Student Name Unit 7: Social Policy Assessor name: Christine Pratt Date of Issue Completion date 27/01/2014 07/03/2014 Student No. Submitted on Assignment title Learning Outcome Learning outcome Assessment criteria LO1 Understand the significant historical and contemporary landmarks in social welfare provision 1.1 Understand the origins of social policies 2.1 Analyse the processes involvedRead MoreSocial Policy Essay6100 Words   |  25 Pages1.1 Identify key historical landmarks in social welfare focusing on the period upto 1945. During the period of 1900s to 1945s, there was various significant landmarks which focused on the social welfare of the people in the United Kingdom. The Uk government launched various welfare programmes through the social welfare provision, financial abet or social security which refers to a programme having the main objective is to provide a minimum level of the income to the people who don’t haveRead MoreEssay on Social Policy Development 1431 Words   |  6 Pagesthis time that attachment begins to form and the learning process from caregivers and their environment take place. As with every stage of development, risks factors exist and need to be acknowledged, this way, possible interventions can occur or social programs offered to address how to minimize these factors to give the individual the best opportunity to thrive. Some major risk factors at this stage of development are poverty and child abuse. Poverty is a crisis for the world’s infants andRead MoreWelfare Reform : A New Era Of Social And Economic Inequality1375 Words   |  6 PagesThe introduction and subsequent implementation of the Welfare Reform act in 2012 by the Coalition government, introduced a new era of increased social and economic inequality in the UK. Through the introduction of welfare reforms, the inequality gap in the UK is at its biggest ever. By focusing on reforms in two areas; housing and benefits, this essay will present the ways in which reforms like the introduction of Universal Credit, the Benefit Cap, Housing reform and finally the reduction and devolvementRead MoreThe Implications of Current Child Policy for the Welfare of Children1466 Words   |  6 PagesThe Implications of Current Child Policy for the Welfare of Children Children in the United Kingdom are key consumers of social policy. They consume a vast amount of the many services provided by this Country. Services such as health care through Doctors, hospitals and clinics, the education system which is largely devoted financially to the schooling of young people, and also the social security system which is stretched by children whose parents are in need of income Read MoreEssay Social Policy - Diabetes3211 Words   |  13 PagesSocial Issue – Diabetes Type 2 Examine a contemporary social issue (which may or may not have been covered during the module) paying particular attention as to why this issue has become problematic and for whom. Also, consider what should be done about your chosen issue and any role that nursing/social work might have in dealing with it. A social issue can be defined as ‘social conditions identified by scientific inquiry and values as detrimental to human well-being’ (Manis 1976). I believe thatRead More THE EVOLUTION OF CARIBBEAN SOCIAL POLICY Essay3323 Words   |  14 PagesTHE EVOLUTION OF CARIBBEAN SOCIAL POLICY: Reasons for the Changes and Shifts in the Social Policy Agenda From the 1940’s to the Present Period. Social Policy may be broadly defined as a system of social welfare that includes economic as well as non-economic objectives and involves some measure of progressive redistribution in command over resources1. Using Mishra’s typology of social welfare models (see Fig. 1 below), this paper describes the evolution of social policy in the English-speakingRead MoreSocial Welfare System in Hong Kong1819 Words   |  8 PagesQuestion 1: Identify one type of the social welfare, discuss its services of Hong Kong and a)explain its values, rationales and objectives; b)ways of service delivery; c)discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the service and d)make suggestions to improve the services in future. CSSA—AN INTRODUCTION The comprehensive Social Security Assistance Scheme (CSSA) is surely one of the most influential social welfare in Hong Kong, in terms of money and beneficiary

Qualitative Research for Instructional Technology Essay

Qualitative Research Qualitative Research Defined: The simplest way to define qualitative research is to say that it is a type of research which involves interpreting nonnumerical data. The underlying belief of qualitative research is that meaning is situated in a particular perspective or context, and, since different people and groups have different perspectives and contexts, there are many different meanings in the world, none of which is necessarily more valid or true than another (Gay Airasian, 1996). A qualitative researcher, therefore, believes that the world cannot be pinned down by objective meanings, but that all variables must be taken into account when conducting research, including the past experiences and†¦show more content†¦The following chart found on page ten of Educational Research: Competencies for Analysis and Application by Gay and Airasian (1996) makes this point very clear: Characteristic Quantitative Research Qualitative Research Approach deductive inductive Purpose theory testing, prediction, establishing facts, hypothesis testing describing multiple realities, developing deep understanding, capturing everyday life Research Focus isolates variables, uses large samples, is often anonymous to participants, uses tests and formal instruments examines full context, interacts with participants, collects data face-to-face from participants Research Plan developed before study is initiated, structured, formal proposal Begins with an initial idea that evolves as researcher learns more about participants and setting, flexible, tentative proposal Data Analysis mainly statistical, quantitative mainly interpretive, descriptive Some Types of Qualitative Research: Qualitative research is often called focus-group research due to the fact that its research samples are often very small (Palmerino, 1999). Focus-group research can be used to determine the nuances or characteristics of a particular group of individuals such as the drama club at aShow MoreRelatedQualitative Research in Instructional Technology Essay2865 Words   |  12 PagesWHAT IS QUALITATIVE RESEARCH? One of the trends over the past decade has been the growing use of and interest in qualitative research for educational research. Qualitative research, broadly defined, means any kind of research that produces findings not arrived at by means of statistical procedures or other means of quantification. Where quantitative researchers seek causal determination, prediction, and generalization of findings, qualitative researchers seek instead illumination, understandingRead MoreEssay on Qualitative Research for Instructional Technology1063 Words   |  5 PagesQualitative Research for Instructional Technology Background: A trend of the past several years has been the growing use of qualitative research for educational research. Qualitative research, broadly defined, means any kind of research that produces findings not arrived at by means of statistical procedures or other means of quantification. Where quantitative researchers seek causal determination, prediction, and generalization of findings, qualitative researchers seek instead illuminationRead More Quantitative Research Essay1294 Words   |  6 PagesQuantitative Research Quantitative research is based on statements such as anything that exists exists in a certain quantity and can be measured. While Thorndike’s statement from 1904 appears to be fairly innocent and direct, it staked an important philosophical position that has persisted in social science research throughout most to this century. (Custer, 1996, p. 3). In 1927, William F. Ogburn successfully lobbied to have Lord Kelvin’s motto: When you cannot measure, your knowledgeRead MoreDesign And Development Case Study1285 Words   |  6 Pagesuse of advanced technology incorporated into classes for many other health care students (Telford Senior, 2017). Successful use of the Web 2.0 tools, such as, Google Drive, blogs, Wiki, instant messaging, social networking, media sharing, and podcasts showed a positive impact by stimulating students intellectually, and making communication easier in education (Amgad AlFaar, 2014; Fan et al., 2016; Hollinderbaumer, Hartz, and Uckert, 2013). However, application and research about the use ofRead MoreMethodological Issues in Educational Research: A Review of Two Articles669 Words   |  3 PagesMethodological Issues in Educational Research: A Review of Two Articles Article One: Qualitative Research on Educational Technology: Philosophies, Methods and Challenges Summary The author of this article claims that empirical research in education is hindered by the fact that researchers cannot produce generalizations fast enough to adapt the instructional treatments to the myriad of variables inherent in any given context of instruction (p. 2-3). Philosophical assumptions with regard toRead MoreQuantitative and Qualitative Research Questions and Hypothesis1050 Words   |  5 PagesQuantitative and Qualitative Research Questions and Hypothesis Yasmine Swindle Revised Problem Statement– Quantitative Study Jung (2007) found that general education teacher’s attitudes toward the integration of students with disabilities reflect a lack of confidence both in their own instructional skills and in the quality of support personnel currently provides. General and special education teachers are placed in inclusive classroom settings for the betterment of the student; however, planningRead MoreA Research Study On Social And Academic Lives984 Words   |  4 PagesResearch is a part of life; it doesn’t matter what you do or where you are you take part in investigating in all the areas of life. There are different designs to research a certain topic. The three designs are qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods research. I will be discussing the three different research designs and how they are used to gather data for a certain study. Qualitative research is used when trying to investigate an issue or concern by using interviews, studying the setting ofRead More The Nature of Quantitative Research Essay1334 Words   |  6 PagesThe Nature of Quantitative Research Quantitative Research Defined: According to Huysamen (1997), descriptions of quantitative research typically discern a cycle of successive phases of hypothesis formulation, data collection, analysis and interpretation. Using a deductive approach, quantitative research seeks to establish facts, make predictions, and test hypotheses that have already been stated. A large part of the data analysis of quantitative research is statistical, striving to showRead MoreProviding More Technology Training For Teachers1457 Words   |  6 PagesThe need that prompted this project proposal is that of providing more technology training for teachers in order to address the ongoing desire for increased student achievement rates in our school and district. In the upcoming school year, our district will be rolling out a 1:1 initiative to provide devices for each student in our school (and all other schools in the county). The problem that comes along with this initiative is the lack of knowledge and training that teachers have recei ved to prepareRead MoreWith An Increasing Amount Of Beliefs And Personal Opinions1401 Words   |  6 Pagesfounded on good educational research or educational psychology. Kirschner and van Merrienboer warn readers of the danger of forming and altering educational methods based on these urban legends. Specifically, three urban legends exist and are addressed in this article. The first urban legend addressed is that learners know best how to deal with new technologies for learning as highly competent digital natives who are effective multi-taskers. Second, the authors cite research to refute that learners

Science Fiction Narrative and Historical Context

Question: Discuss about theScience Fiction for Narrative and Historical Context. Answer: Introduction The Time Machine is significant in the context that the novel focuses on one of the most debated and experimented topic in present day science, thirty years before Science has ever thought of it. The Time Machine was the first full-length work of fiction of Wells, focusing heavily on the concept of time travel. In the veils of metaphor, however, Wells describes a social reality of 19th century England, or rather presents a universal social reality where there is always a strong and a weak community to create a hierarchical society (Bergonzi 2016). Wells narrator does not support or goes against of them; both Eloi and Morlocks possess deplorable and commendable traits. Only the Morlock and Elois are attached in a food-chain cycle. This powered-weak struggle of society is reflected in multiples of fictions, be it science or social. Another example in this point counts to be Childhoods End. Both the novels highlight to the social reality in different historical context. The narratives put impetus in focusing to the realities. The essay attempts to focus and highlight on the narrative structure to trace the social reality in the light of the context they are written on (Lesnik-Oberstein 2016). To focus on The Time Machine, the approach towards the society is universal. Critics unanimously have agreed on the great literary value of the text but commentaries have widely varied. For some critics the story is mythic and deeply allegorical while others compare it with the Treasure Island or Haggards King Solomons Mines as a tale of adventure that is enjoyed by readers of all age groups (James 2012). Childhoods End similarly has been a well-received and enjoyable science fiction. However, the similarity between the fictions lies in the irony that the novels have been until this date accepted as nothing but a science fiction than a handy description of the contemporary reality and a concerned description of the substantial themes of the timeline of the contemporary century (Clarke 2012). The Time Machine deals in the 19th century social and historical context whereas The Childhoods End focuses on the 20th century science experiments and the warlike situation of 20th century. Howe ver, in spite of belonging to two different timelines, both the novels express a concern in the crucial conclusion; the extinction of a race (Booker and Thomas 2009). Humanity in Wells is separated into two classes, the Eloi and the Morlock; the Elois are described to be beautiful and delicate with a lazy and submittal attitude towards life. Morlocks are quite naturally the opposites of Eloi. They are hardworking, and more prone towards surviving. To put a close focus, the Elois and the Morlocks are the segmentation and the compartmentalization of the people for the two different narrators (Bergonzi 2016). The Time Machine enjoys two narrators in two different timelines; the author as the initial narrator as one of the 19th century group members when the time traveler narrates his experience and the traveler in the 802701 AD in which time he travels in (the time he relates in his story). The narrative style is similar to much of the 19th century Victorian fiction, a double narrative technique as can be seen in the predecessor novels like Emily Brontes Wuthering Heights or Charles Dickens Bleak House. Such narrative technique is important in the pl ot of fictions analyzing and criticizing a social reality to put Bleak House as an example of it (Bell et al 2013). The narrative gives the author ample freedom to criticize the conventional practices of the society under the veil of allegories and metaphors. The author as the unnamed narrator at the beginning starts the story in a much simple and straightforward manner. However, the narrative subverts with the changing of the narrator when the much serious issues have been discussed (James 2012). The Time Machine focuses on the issue of grim social realities of 19th century England that was the main reason behind Wells taking up the mythological rather allegorical narrative of the Time traveler. To quote the traveler himself as he mentions: So, in the end, above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots; the Workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their labour...It had been no such triumph of moral education and general co-operation as I had imagined. Instead, I saw a real aristocracy, armed with a perfected science and working to a logical conclusion the industrial system of today(Wells 79). Such was the true situation of England in the Industrial era. To focus on the social situation of the time, 19th century industrial society saw much progress in terms of social and industrial progress. The rapid spread of industrialization and the urban culture n England, the medicinal, technological, scientific progress changed many facets of the contemporary culture. With the progress of time the rich or the Haves as wells mentions it faced a rapid growth in proportion to the society and industry. On the contrary with the boom of population the poor or the have nots became more stratified (Starr 2015). It is the same situation that the time travelers version of narration puts in the time of 802,701 AD. The metaphors of Eloi and Morlock gives the author the freedom of a narrator to portray and bring up the deplorable, pathetic, despised yet feared situation of the Morlocks and the lazy, prone to comfort and the minor condition of the Elois (Wells et al 2005). However, the existence of the Elois and Morlocks resembles the theories of natural selection as J. Allen Smith mentions: There is no scientific basis for the belief in natural order that everywhere and always makes for progress. Competition or the struggle for existence ensures at most merely the survival of the fittest; but survival of the fittest does not always mean survival of the best (Bell 2013). The Childhoods End on the other hand focuses on the much political scenario of the world war in metaphor of the Alien invasion. Contradictory to The Time Machine, Childhoods End maintains a first person narrative and in a quite straightforward manner (Clarke 2012) narrates the invasion, the systematic approach of the aliens first in a friendly and later all consuming approach to destroy the race of humanity. Clarke quite significantly takes up the name Overlords as the name of the Aliens that concisely sums up the attitude of the Aliens (Booker and Thomas 2009). The aliens resemble the mediaeval concept of the Devil in their physical features. On mythological grounds the physic of the Aliens are enough proof to abide by the terms; bending on the destruction of Humanity (Lesnik-Oberstein 2015). However, to focus on the historical context, the 1953 novel takes much of its inspiration from the World War II scenario. Arthur C. Clarke himself recounts the memory of the invading Space Ships first emerged in his mind from the Barrage Balloons on the sky of London during the World War II (Clarke 2012). Thus the overarching and devilish image of the aliens metaphorically becomes equivalent and tangible image of the destructive War which eventually was responsible to the loss of much life. Initially War especially the allied forces initially lead people to belief a war is for the safety or social security and the opinion of the mass was ignored. However, the Overlords in the text resembles much of the lords in the sates of England, America or Russia: Your race, in its present stage of evolution, cannot face that stupendous challenge. One of my duties has been to protect you from the powers and forces that lie among the starsforce beyond anything that you can ever imagine (Clarke 32 ). Moreover, the humanity allies with the forces of Aliens to create a better state which eventually comes back to them as a serious, critical issue. The third person narrative gives the author the freedom to analyze and criticize the social situation and the role of the president/ generals in destroying the humanity in a so-called unconventional manner (Tsurumi 2015). Another important point the fiction highlights on is the issue how a much powerful and strategically inclined power might influence and use the lesser powers to destroy the minor itself. The Overlords are no exception to that. Even in a world of fiction, Clarke, as he highlights proves that the characteristic of power always remains the same; it can never be a friend to the minors, nor can it be selfless enough to help the Others which would eventually come and might turn against them. Such incidents were regular phenomena on political ground during the World War II (booker and Thomas 2009). Social reality as reflected in the childhood reality is much similar to the situation and crisis every common man faced during the war. However the present day visualizations have changed much of the plots and the themes of both The Time Machine and Childhood End. However, though the timeline is much different both the texts focus on the same issue: the plight of human situation under hierarchy and the bureaucracy (Hughes 2001). Reference: Bell, Frances, et al. "Science fiction prototypes: Visionary technology narratives between futures."Futures50 (2013): 5-14. Bergonzi, Bernard.The Early HG Wells: a study of the scientific romances. University of Toronto Press, 2016. Booker, M. Keith, and Anne-Marie Thomas.The science fiction handbook. John Wiley Sons, 2009.. Chang, Iris.The rape of Nanking: The forgotten holocaust of World War II. Basic Books, 2012. Clarke, Arthur C.Childhoods end. Vol. 4. RosettaBooks, 2012. Hovanec, Caroline. "Rereading HG Wells's The Time Machine: Empiricism, Aestheticism, Modernism."English Literature in Transition, 1880-192058.4 (2015): 459-485. Hughes, David.The greatest sci-fi movies never made. Chicago Review Press, 2001. James, Simon J.Maps of Utopia: HG Wells, Modernity and the End of Culture. Oxford University Press, 2012. Lesnik-Oberstein, Karn. "Gender, Childhood and Children's Literature: The CIRCL Approach."Asian Women32.2 (2016). Starr, Mike. "" I flung myself into futurity": HG Wellss Deleuzian time machine." (2015): 51-62. Tsurumi, Kazuko.Social change and the individual: Japan before and after defeat in World War II. Princeton University Press, 2015. Wells, Herbert George, Gregory Claeys, and Patrick Parrinder.A modern utopia. Penguin UK, 2005.

Quebec Essays - French Quebecers, Lucien Bouchard,

Quebec Maine doesn't see Quebec sovereignty as a threat ROCKPORT, Me. - Premier Lucien Bouchard got the message he wanted Thursday from two American politicians: Quebec's future is an internal matter and economic ties would be kept with their state if it leaves Canada. "The future of Quebec is essentially a Canadian matter," Maine Governor Angus King said at a news conference with Bouchard in Rockport, a community on the Atlantic Ocean. "It's not up to us to sit on the sidelines and suggest what the solution should be," King added. Bouchard was on a one-day tour of Maine to attend a business development conference to promote trade between the two struggling economies. King, whose motto is "Export or die' said putting people to work is his priority. "Jobs is really what it's all about." Mark Lawrence, president of the state's Senate, said Maine would keep economic ties with an independent Quebec. "We have a strong history with Quebec and whatever form of government Quebec chooses, we intend to maintain a strong relationship with Quebec," Lawrence said. Bouchard couldn't disagree, adding that the first rule of diplomacy is to stay clear of your neighbor's political problems. "No country would like to see other countries get involved in their internal business," the premier said. Bouchard didn't shy away from the sovereignty issue. He tried avoiding the matter last time he was in New England, saying it slipped his mind. He visited Boston last June and said questions about Quebec voting to leave Canada hadn't been raised. But Bouchard still preferred to dwell on the economic aspects of the Maine trip, saying it's important for the state and the province to strengthen their economic ties. Trade between them is worth about $207 million US annually. They aim to increase tourism and technology and possibly designate a heritage highway between Quebec and Maine. Bouchard said he hopes the trip boosts Quebec's international image and "doesn't hurt its reputation." King and Lawrence played up Maine's strong French cultural heritage. About 30 per cent of the state's population of more than one million have French roots. They left Quebec at the turn of the century to work in New England's textile mills. Maine, one of Quebec's closest U.S. neighbors, is also a popular tourist destination in the summer for Quebecers. Bouchard, who likes to visit Maine in the summer with his family, has struck up a friendship with King based on their passion for Thomas Jefferson, a father of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. King gave Bouchard a portrait of Jefferson. In turn, Bouchard gave King a book by Jefferson about the problems with debt, something Bouchard said his "foes in Quebec say I'm obsessed about." King, who didn't seem surprised to receive the book, said the exchange of Jefferson-related gifts was a coincidence. "We didn't plan this," he laughed.

How to Write a 10-Page Term Paper

How to Write a 10-Page Term Paper How to Write a 10-Page Term Paper How to Write a 10-Page Term PaperWhen being assigned to write a 10-page term paper, most students give way to despair for the workload they have to accomplish seems to be incredibly extensive. This is true, it is difficult to write a 10-page term paper well, still, it is possible, and in this article we will tell you how to do it. If you are writing, for example, 15 page term paper or long term paper 10 pages, you need to devote enough time to planning your time. Alternatively, you may simply order custom term paper writing service at our site and get at least 250 words a page term paper written from scratch!The first thing you should keep in mind when getting started to write your 10-page term paper is that an elaborative plan of actions will make your writing process much easier. That is why we strongly recommend you start your work with making a schedule. Find out when your deadline is and calculate the number of days at your disposal. Your writing process will include the fol lowing steps:Choosing a topic;Gathering material;Taking notes and organizing ideas;Writing;Editing.Some useful tips on how to write a 10-page term paper also seem to be right in time for you. So, here they are:How to write a 10-page term paper: Researching materialWhen dealing with sources, use reviews. They usually present additional information, references, and leads. This is a good path for you to understand the primary sources better and analyze them deeper in your paper. Still, you should go beyond this, since a paper based only on secondary sources is regarded as weak. How to write a 10-page term paper: Writing techniques and styleUsually, term papers are required to be written in an academic language. So, no colloquial speech words like slang or jargons are accepted. Imagine yourself to be a fully-fledged researcher. How would you present your research in the paper?How to write a 10-page term paper: Making an introductionWe advise you make only some notes on your introduction and come back to it after you finish to write your 10-page term paper. Usually, this part includes the purposes of research, the writers expectations from it, and the research question he/she is going to answer in the paper.How to write a 10-page term paper: Working out the main bodyThis part consists of several smaller ones where you discuss the works by other researchers devoted to your research question. In data presentation part, tell what approaches to the question exist. In analysis, explain what the data presented might mean, how it can be interpreted.How to write a 10-page term paper: Drawing a conclusionIn this part, tell what you have come up to after completing the research. What conclusions have you withdrawn? If you want to write a 10-page term paper or term paper 15 pages successfully and get a high grade, do your best to meet all the requirements your professor set.

The Ancient Illyrians Connection to Todays Albanians

The Ancient Illyrians Connection to Todays Albanians Mystery enshrouds the exact origins of todays Albanians. Most historians of the Balkans believe the Albanian people are in large part descendants of the ancient Illyrians, who, like other Balkan peoples, were subdivided into tribes and clans. The name Albania is derived from the name of an Illyrian tribe called the Arber, or Arbereshà «, and later Albanoi, that lived near Durrà «s. The Illyrians were Indo-European tribesmen who appeared in the western part of the Balkan Peninsula about 1000 B.C., a period coinciding with the end of the Bronze Age and beginning of the Iron Age. They inhabited much of the area for at least the next millennium. Archaeologists associate the Illyrians with the Hallstatt culture, an Iron Age people noted for production of iron and bronze swords with winged-shaped handles and for domestication of horses. The Illyrians occupied lands extending from the Danube, Sava, and Morava rivers to the Adriatic Sea and the Sar Mountains. At various times, groups of Il lyrians migrated over land and sea into Italy. The Illyrians carried on commerce and warfare with their neighbors. The ancient Macedonians probably had some Illyrian roots, but their ruling class adopted Greek cultural characteristics. The Illyrians also mingled with the Thracians, another ancient people with adjoining lands on the east. In the south and along the Adriatic Sea coast, the Illyrians were heavily influenced by the Greeks, who founded trading colonies there. The present-day city of Durrà «s evolved from a Greek colony known as Epidamnos, which was founded at the end of the seventh century B.C. Another famous Greek colony, Apollonia, arose between Durrà «s and the port city of Vlorà «. The Illyrians produced and traded cattle, horses, agricultural goods, and wares fashioned from locally mined copper and iron. Feuds and warfare were constant facts of life for the Illyrian tribes, and Illyrian pirates plagued shipping on the Adriatic Sea. Councils of elders chose the chieftains who headed each of the numerous Illyrian tribes. From time to time, local chieftains extended their rule over other tribes and formed short-lived kingdoms. During the fifth century B.C., a well-developed Illyrian population center existed as far north as the upper Sava River valley in what is now Slovenia. Illyrian friezes discovered near the present-day Slovenian city of Ljubljana depict ritual sacrifices, feasts, battles, sporting events, and other activities. The Illyrian kingdom of Bardhyllus became a formidable local power in the fourth century B.C. In 358 B.C., however, Macedonias Philip II, father of Alexander the Great, defeated the Illyrians and assumed control of their territory as far as Lake Ohrid (see fig. 5). Alexander himself routed the forces of the Illyrian chieftain Clitus in 335 B.C., and Illyrian tribal leaders and soldiers accompanied Alexander on his conquest of Persia. After Alexanders death in 323 B.C., independent Illyrian kingdoms again arose. In 312 B.C., King Glaucius expelled the Greeks from Durrà «s. By the end of the third century, an Illyrian kingdom based near what is now the Albanian city of Shkodà «r controlled parts of northern Albania, Montenegro, and Hercegovina. Under Queen Teuta, Illyrians attacked Roman merchant vessels plying the Adriatic Sea and gave Rome an excuse to invade the Balkans. In the Illyrian Wars of 229 and 219 B.C., Rome overran the Illyrian settlements in the Neretva River valley. The Romans made new gains in 168 B.C., and Roman forces captured Illyrias King Gentius at Shkodà «r, which they called Scodra, and brought him to Rome in 165 B.C. A century later, Julius Caesar and his rival Pompey fought their decisive battle near Durrà «s (Dyrrachium). Rome finally subjugated recalcitrant Illyrian tribes in the western Balkans [during the reign] of Emperor Tiberius in A.D. 9. The Romans divided the lands that make up present-day Albania among the provinces of Macedonia, Dalmatia, and Epirus. For about four centuries, Roman rule brought the Illyrian-populated lands economic and cultural advancement and ended most of the enervating clashes among local tribes. The Illyrian mountain clansmen retained local authority but pledged allegiance to the emperor and acknowledged the authority of his envoys. During a yearly holiday honoring the Caesars, the Illyrian mountaineers swore loyalty to the emperor and reaffirmed their political rights. A form of this tradition, known as the kuvend, has survived to the present day in northern Albania. The Romans established numerous military camps and colonies and completely latinized the coastal cities. They also oversaw the construction of aqueducts and roads, including the Via Egnatia, a famous military highway and trade route that led from Durrà «s through the Shkumbin River valley to Macedonia and Byzantium (later Constantinople) Constantinople Originally a Greek city, Byzantium, it was made the capital of the Byzantine Empire by Constantine the Great and was soon renamed Constantinople in his honor. The city was captured by the Turks in 1453 and became the capital of the Ottoman Empire. The Turks called the city Istanbul, but most of the non-Muslim world knew it as Constantinople until about 1930. Copper, asphalt, and silver were extracted from the mountains. The main exports were wine, cheese, oil, and fish from Lake Scutari and Lake Ohrid. Imports included tools, metalware, luxury goods, and other manufactured articles. Apollonia became a cultural center, and Julius Caesar himself sent his nephew, later the Emperor Augustus, to study there. Illyrians distinguished themselves as warriors in the Roman legions and made up a significant portion of the Praetorian Guard. Several of the Roman emperors were of Illyrian origin, including Diocletian (284-305), who saved the empire from disintegration by introducing institutional reforms, and Constantine the Great (324-37)who accepted Christianity and transferred the empires capital from Rome to Byzantium, which he called Constantinople. Emperor Justinian (527-65)who codified Roman law, built the most famous Byzantine church, the Hagia Sofia, and re-extended the empires control over lost territories- -was probably also an Illyrian. Christianity came to the Illyrian-populated lands in the first century A.D. Saint Paul wrote that he preached in the Roman province of Illyricum, and legend holds that he visited Durrà «s. When the Roman Empire was divided into eastern and western halves in A.D. 395, the lands that now make up Albania were administered by the Eastern Empire but were ecclesiastically dependent on Rome. In A.D. 732, however, a Byzantine emperor, Leo the Isaurian, subordinated the area to the patriarchate of Constantinople. For centuries thereafter, the Albanian lands became an arena for the ecclesiastical struggle between Rome and Constantinople. Most Albanians living in the mountainous north became Roman Catholic, while in the southern and central regions, the majority became Orthodox. Source [for the Library of Congress]: Based on information from R. Ernest Dupuy and Trevor N. Dupuy, The Encyclopedia of Military History, New York, 1970, 95; Herman Kinder and Werner Hilgemann, The Anchor Atlas of World History, 1, New York, 1974, 90, 94; and Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15, New York, 1975, 1092. Data as of April 1992SOURCE: The Library of Congress - ALBANIA - A Country Study

Mother Challenge Personal Statement Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Mother Challenge - Personal Statement Example Texting for me, is my primary source of communication. I rarely actually talk on the phone and my daily schedule is so hectic that I don't have many opportunities to meet up with my friends. Usually, as I am going about my daily routine, I receive a text message from a friend, pause for a moment and text back. It is a quick and efficient way of catching up with people without any inconvenience. I found that when I stopped texting I had relied upon it way too much. Not being able to text felt like living in a vacuum. To be completely honest, if I had not had to deal with roaming charges, I probably would not have been able to do this assignment. As for not using the computer, well I failed that one. I struggled for one day without using it and concluded that society never really existed until the computer age. I could not live without my computer. I did however, make a concerted effort to reduce my time on the computer. The computer is such an integral part of my life that I really cannot accomplish much without it. Likewise for the television. I never realized how much television I watch. It too, is part of my daily routine and even if I am not sitting and watching it, it is still always on. I never noticed that life takes place outside of my windows because I always have the TV blaring. I even fall asleep at night watching TV.

A REVIEW OF PROVIDING EMPLOYEES BENEFITS IN SAMSUNG IN SOUTH KOREA Essay

A REVIEW OF PROVIDING EMPLOYEES BENEFITS IN SAMSUNG IN SOUTH KOREA - Essay Example Korean based firm that is headquartered in Suwon. Having been established in 1969 when it was referred to as Samsung Electric Industries, the company has embarked on product diversification an aspect that has made it to enjoy a competitive position in the electronic industry. Soon after it was established, the company embarked on acquiring other firms within the same industry with an objective of expanding its capital bases as well as putting in place effective marketing strategies. Some of the notable firms that Samsung acquired were Korea Semiconductor and Korea Telecommunication in 1974 and 1980 respectively. Investing in technology especially between 1995 and 2008 made the company to acquire a significant market share an aspect that made the company to effectively face off its key competitor Sony. In order to effectively meet the needs of its global market, the company diverted from consumer brands to enter in the filed of memory. This made it to be a key supplier of the NAND mem ory and A7 processors to the Apple Company. Recently, Samsung has indicated an expansive growth that has made it not only to incur high profits but also it has created a strong positive consumer product relationship. From the introduction and adoption of 5G technology to the launching of Galaxy S series, Samsung registered a profit of US $9.4 billion in the third quarter of 3013. In order to ensure that its operations are effectively varied out in the local and global market, Samsung maintains a workforce of 470,000 employees. Thus the need to keep them motivated as a way of enlacing the company profitability. 1.2 Research title, research question and research objectives A review of providing employees benefits in Samsung in South Korea Research question What is the impact of providing employees benefits in Samsung? Research objectives Analyzing the impact of employees benefit program on Samsung performance Outline the employees, benefits program Reviewing the implementation of prov iding employees benefits in Samsung Company What are the benefits of providing employees for the company? 1.3 Research rationale This research will use the studies done by various individuals who have done extensive coverage of the benefits offered by the Samsung Company in its effort to improve the productivity of its employees. 2 Literature review 2.1 Introduction Being an international company with an objective of expanding its customer bases and acquiring a wide market segment, Samsung has a strong linkage with its employees. Ranging from technical managers to the sales representative, the company has established a number of employee’s benefits that are aimed at motivating them thus improving their productivity. Through the establishment of Samsung’s welfare system, the company provides not only financial support to the employees, but also it provides health, leisure and education facilities to the employees. The establishment of an integrated benefit scheme, Samsu ng has maintained a strong workforce that has made it to put at bay it key competitors including Nokia and Apple. The part below reviews studies done by various people on the impact of providing employees benefits in Samsung. 2.2 High compensation In his studies on compensation and negotiation, Chingos (1985) support an increment of salaries not only as a way of compensating them but also as

The Role of Geology in Influencing Water Chemistry Essay Example for Free

The Role of Geology in Influencing Water Chemistry Essay Water is and remains one of the important wants of the people, animals and the nature at large. Without water, they would be no life. Water is an unusual compound which has unique physical properties, and this makes it the compound of life, yet it’s the most abundant compound in the earth’s biosphere. The chemistry of  water  deals with the fundamental chemical property and information about water. Water chemistry can elaborate in terms of the following subtitles: composition of water, Structure, and bonding, Molecular Vibration, as well as geological composition and properties of water among many other aspects of water chemistry (Krauskopf and Bird, 1994). Geology  is often responsible for how much water  filters below the zone of saturation, making the water table easy to measure. Light,  porous  rocks can hold more water than heavy,  dense  rocks. An area underlain with  pumice, a very light and porous rock, is more likely to hold a fuller aquifer and provide a clearer measurement for a water table. The water table of an area underlain with hard  granite  or  marble may be much more difficult to  assess (Krauskopf and Bird, 1994). Hypothesis: surficial geology controls the chemistry of surface waters Introduction Water quality has become one of the essential aspects in life, and it’s defined in terms of the chemical, biological and physical composition of the geological factor. The water quality of rivers, lakes and many other water source changes from one geographical location to another. This is due to difference in the geological composition of the places, i.e., the rocks beneath the earths surface are different and in turn different quality in water quality. However, various factors influence water chemistry in the world (Drever, 1982). One of such vital elements is ‘geology’. This is the science deals with the dynamics and physical history of the earths’, the rock that makes the earths crust, and the physical, chemical, and biological changes that the earth undergoes or has undergone. In other words, geology is the science entails the study of rock-solid Earth, the  rocks  of which it is composed, and the processes by which they change. This branch of scien ce is one of vital and major contributing factor in the water chemistry. In order to understand the impact of geology on the water chemistry, this paper will look into the ground water (Drever, 1982). Clear understanding of the nature of the bedrock layers of the region is essential as geology is in determining the quality and quantity of ground water that can be obtained from the underground at any given location. For example, in some parts of the earth, the bedrock consists of sedimentary layers of rocks that have profuse pore spaces between mineral grains. The rock layers can form creatively wide aquifers, or conduits for groundwater movement, that are of predictable depths, and from which apparently indefinite quantities of high-quality groundwater can be obtained. In such areas, groundwater is the clear way out for public water needs (Frape et al, 1984). Bedrock geology helps in determining the distribution and density of underground water-bearing fissures, as well as the nature  of the soils that are obtained from the rock weathering. Different types of rocks contain more or less fractures that may or may not be interconnected with each other. The degree of interconnection among fractures, and their overall ability to move water, has a great deal to do with how productive a water well will be that intersects the fractures. Different rocks also make different soils when they weather, and the type of soil influences its ability to absorb rainwater that falls on the surface, and transmit the water to bedrock fractures beneath (Cooke et al, 2012). The composition of the underground water as well as the surface water is dependent on natural factors, (geological, topographical, meteorological, hydrological, and biological) in the drainage basin and varies with seasonal differences in runoff volumes, weather conditions, and water levels. The quality is, however, affected by both natural and human influences. The most vital or importance of the natural influences is geological, hydrological and climatic, since this affects both quality and quantity of the water available. Underground water is held in the pore space of sediments such as sands or gravels or in the fissures of fractured rock such as crystalline rock and limestone. The rocky body containing the water is termed an aquifer and the upper water level in the saturated body is termed the water table. Typically, groundwater’s have a steady flow pattern. Velocity is governed mainly by the porosity and permeability of the material through which the water flows, and is often up to several orders of magnitude less than that of surface water, as a result mixing is poor (Cooke et al, 2012). The rock or sediment in an aquifer is denoted by the permeability and porosity, whereby permeability is the measure of the ease with which fluids passes through the rocks. On the other hand, porosity is the ratio of pores and fissure volume to the total volume of the rock. The chemical composition of the rocks greatly influences the chemical composition of water. The different types of aquifers explain this difference in water chemistry all over the places (John, 1990). Underground formations are three types, hard crystalline rocks, and consolidated sedimentary and unconsolidated sediments. The example of hard crystalline rocks includes granites, gneisses, quartzite’s, schist’s, and a few rocks from volcanic rocks. These rocks have little or no porosity but it is further enhanced by weathering. For example, ground water in volcanic formations in regions of recent volcanic activity is mostly inhibited with fluoride, and boron elements, which makes it unsuitable uses. Chemical properties of the bedrock greatly influence the chemical properties and water chemistry. For example, water acidity is highly determined by the drift of the bedrock geology. The following example examines the influence of bedrock and soils on water acidity. When the bedrock constitutes of carbonates, the solution of the minerals assimilates H+ ions and hence acidifying water as water percolates through the rocks. CaCO3 + H+ = Ca2+ +HCO3 this results to acidified wa ter (John, 1990). Effect of Total Dissolved Solids in Groundwater A body of saturated rocks through where water can easily move is known as an aquifer. Aquifers contain rocks such as sandstone, conglomerate, fractured limestone and unconsolidated sand and gravel which are both permeable and porous. In addition, fractured volcanic rocks, i.e. columnar basalts also make good aquifers (John, 1990). Underground water tastes dissimilar from one place to the other or else at different times of the year for several reasons. In exploring those reasons, the paper looks first consider why water from one well might be different from another well, even one that is close by. What dictates groundwater taste is the quantity and type of dissolved minerals in it. In other words, this isn’t pure water as pure water has no dissolved minerals and hence does not occur naturally. The amount and type of minerals that are dissolved in water is what gives waters their initial taste. There are different factors that control the dissolved minerals in the ground water. (I) The type of minerals, making up the aquifer, (II) the chemical state of the ground water, (III), the duration or length of time which water makes contact with the minerals and the rocks (Frape et al, 1984). As the rain water passes through different types aquifers, it results in a different chemical composition of water. Almost all groundwater comes from precipitation that soaks into the soil and passes down to the aquifers. Within the aquifer, the groundwater moves not as an underground stream, but rather seeping between and around individual soil and rock particles. Rainwater has a slightly acidic pH; therefore it tends to dissolve solid minerals in the soil and in the aquifers. Sandstone, limestone and basalt all have different minerals. Therefore it is rational to expect groundwater in contact with these different geologic materials to have different chemical compositions {factor (1) above} and therefore different tastes. In addition, the length the groundwater is in contact with the minerals, the greater the extent of its reaction with those minerals and the higher will be the content of dissolved minerals (John, 1990). The table below can be used to illustrate the effect of mineral in water hence determining water chemistry. The table illustrates typical natural water compositions, from rainwater to seawater, groundwater in different aquifers, to groundwater that has been in contact with the aquifer for different periods of time. Table 1.0 A B C D E F G H Ca 0.7 0.65 240 399 145 6.6 3.10 4530 Mg 1.1 0.14 7200 1340 54 1.1 0.7 162 Na 9.5 0.56 83500 10400 ~27 ~37 3.02 2730 K 0.11 4060 370 ~2 ~3 1.08 32.0 Bicarbonate 4 250 27 620 75 20 56 Sulfate 7.5 2.2 16400 186 60 15 1.0 1.0 Chloride 17 0.57 140000 19020 52 17 0.5 12600 Silica 0.3 48 3 21 103 16.4 8.5 TDS 38 4.7 254000 35000 665 221 35 20330 PH 5.4 7.5 6.6 6.2 6.5 Table 1; key Examples of the composition of natural water from a variety of locations and environments (all concentrations given in milligrams/liter). TDS = total dissolved solids. A dash (-) indicates that the component was not detected or the water was not analyzed for this constituent. A tilde (~) indicates that the analysis is approximate only (John, 1990). Key to the Analyses: (A) Rainwater from Menlo Park, California; (B) Average rainwater from sites in North Carolina and Virginia; (C) Great Salt Lake, Utah; (D) Average seawater; (E) Groundwater from limestone of the Supai Formation, Grand Canyon; (F) Groundwater from volcanic rocks, New Mexico; (G) Groundwater from a spring, Sierra Nevada Mountains: short residence time; (H) Groundwater from metamorphic rocks in Canada: long-residence time. Chemical State of Ground Water A large amount of the seasonal and natural water quality disparities we observe are the result of small but considerable alterations in the chemical state of groundwater. The chemical state of groundwater is generally defined in terms of parameters such as, the temperature, oxidation-reduction potential, and PH. These three factors are greatly influenced by chemical reactions between the aquifer materials and the ground water, hence changing the water chemistry in the common water bodies such as lakes, rivers, oceans, etc. the chemical composition of the aquifer greatly controls the physical properties of water such as color, hardness, taste, odor and appearance (John, 1990). Table 1.1 Water Characteristics and Its Causes (John, 1990) Characteristics or Symptoms Cause(s) Hardness: Low suds production with soap, mineral scale developed in water heater and plumbing High concentrations of calcium and magnesium Color: Water has a color other than clear Red/Brown: iron Black: manganese or organic matter Yellow: dissolved organic matter such as tannins Taste: Metallic or mineral taste Metallic: dissolved metals such as iron and manganese Mineral taste: high concentration of common minerals such as sodium, Chloride, sulfate, calcium, etc. Odor: Musty or rotten egg smell Musty: algae or bacterial growth pipes or well Rotten egg: hydrogen sulfide Appearance: cloudy with or without color Suspended mineral matter or microorganisms Control the chemical composition of groundwater. For example, the total dissolved solids (TDS) in groundwater, largely derived from aquifer minerals that dissolve in groundwater, will change significantly as a function of temperature and PH. Temperature. At any given temperature, there is a specific concentration of a dissolved mineral constituent in the groundwater that is in contact with that mineral. The actual concentration is temperature dependent, e.g., at higher temperatures, groundwater can dissolve more of the mineral. Even changes in groundwater temperature of only 5 to 10 C can cause detectable changes in TDS (John, 1990). The Natural pH of Groundwater, The pH is a determination of the acidity of groundwater: the lower the pH value, the more acidic the water is and vice versa (a measure of the hydrogen ion (H+) availability). At a pH of 7, water is said to be neutral. Natural rainwater is slightly acidic because it combines with carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, forming carbonic acid (H2CO3) according to the reaction (1) H2O + CO2 = H2CO3. Some of the carbonic acid in the rainwater disassociates or breaks down according to the reaction (2), H2CO3 = HCO- + H+ producing bicarbonate (HCO-) and H+. This in turn reduces the PH of the rain water. In addition, the acidic water that is formed is able to dissolve more of the minerals in the aquifers hence greatly contributing to the change of water chemistry. The more amount of CO2 in the atmosphere the more acidic the water becomes (Verdonschot, 2013). Composition of the Earth’s Crust, The relative abundance of elements in the crustal material of the Earth has been a subject of much interest to chemists for many years. Although the subject of natural-water chemistry is only indirectly concerned with these averages, a knowledge of rock composition is essential to understanding the chemical composition of natural water, and it is therefore desirable to discuss the subject briefly. The Earth is generally considered to be made up of an iron-rich core surrounded by a thick mantle made up of magnesium- and iron-rich silicates and a thin outer crust made up of rather extensively reworked silicates and other minerals. Reversible and Irreversible Reactions in Water Chemistry, Many kinds of chemical reactions can be important in establishing and maintaining the composition of natural water. Concepts that are appropriate for evaluating these processes differ somewhat depending on the nature of the reactions involved. Therefore, some at tention needs to be given to reaction types here, although this cannot be a rigorous classification scheme (Verdonschot, 2013). Different types of rocks and the impact to the water chemistry There are three major types or classes of rocks, namely, sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic. The three are different from each other as they also have varying differences in terms of impact to the water chemistry. To start with, sedimentary rocks are rocks formed from particles of pebbles, shells, sand and other fragments. The different particles are brought together and hence called sediment, whereby they accumulate for a long time and in layers over a long time forming a rock (Verdonschot, 2013). Generally, sedimentary rocks are fairly soft and may in turn break or crumble easily. You can often see sand, pebbles, or stones in the rock and it are usually the only type that contains fossils. Examples of this rock type include conglomerate and limestone among many other rocks. These rocks contain a lot of minerals much of which are soluble in water. As the rain water passes through the rocks, the minerals are absorbed and in turn contributing to the changing or different water chemi stry from one region to the other. For example, carbonate-cemented sandstone that is composed largely of silica in the form of quartz might yield water containing mostly calcium and bicarbonate ions (Geology.com, 2014). One type of rocks under the class sedimentary is the chemical sedimentary rocks. This is formed when minerals dissolved in the water starts to precipitate forming a rock of minerals. However, not all minerals do precipitate and in turn become part of the water in the lakes and rivers. Many resistant sedimentary rocks are permeable and may, therefore, easily receive and transmit solutes acquired by water from some other type of rock. In the course of moving through the sedimentary formations, several kinds of alteration processes may occur that may influence the composition of the transmitted water (Verdonschot, 2013). Fig 1.0 sedimentary rock image (Geology.com, 2014) The 2nd type of rocks is the Metamorphic, these are rocks formed under the surface of the earth from the changes which are caused by intense heat and pressure. Rocks formed through this process are mostly denoted by ribbon like layers and may also have shiny crystals that grow slowly over time. A good example of this rock type includes gneiss and marble. Fig 1.1 an image of a metamorphic rock (Geology.com, 2014) Lastly, there is the ‘Igneous’. These are rocks formed when molten rock deep within the earth (magma) cools and hardens. This cooling and hardening may occur either inside the earth’s crust or else it blows up onto the earth’s surface from volcanoes (in this case, it is called lava). When the lava cools very quickly, there are no crystals form and the rock looks shiny and glasslike. Occasionally gas bubbles are ensnared in the rock all through the cooling process, leaving tiny holes and spaces in the rock (Buynevich, 2011). Examples of these rocks include basalt and obsidian. Igneous rocks consist predominantly of silicate minerals. As the solutions move through the soil and the underlying rock, the composition of the water should be expected to change. Rocks of igneous origin may be classified as extrusive or intrusive. Both the extrusive and intrusive rocks are further classified by geologists on the basis of chemical and mineral composition, texture, and other characteristics. Rocks of the same chemical and mineral composition have different names, but tend to yield similar weathering products to the water. Fig 1.2 images of an igneous rock (granite) (Geology.com, 2014) Many of the rocks in the three classes contain numerous chemicals which contribute to the defining of water chemistry in one way or another. In ground water composition, seven solutes are the most commonly found salts in metals. These seven solutes make up nearly 95 percent of all water solutes (Buynevich, 2011). These salts include calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), sodium (Na), potassium (K), chloride (Cl), sulfate (SO4), and bicarbonate (HCO3). Sodium is derived from the dissolution of silicate minerals, such as plagioclase feldspars, which make up some of the sand and gravel that fill the water basin. Potassium is derived from the dissolution of some silicate minerals in granitic rocks and from reactions with some clay minerals. Few reactions remove these seven solutes from ground water. However, some minerals, such as calcite CaCO3, can precipitate from solution to form a solid phase (Buynevich, 2011). Conclusion The interpretation of the water chemistry data has become vital and most reliably made within the conceptual framework on the ground water system that has been derived from several additional types of hydrologic and geologic data, such as water levels, that indicate general directions of ground-water flow. One of the major aspects of the geology of the human is the fact that it helps in maintaining the quality of water supplies. This helps understand the sources of water and in turn protect them from pollution. In addition, it helps in determining the suitability for various uses such as drinking, farming among many other uses (Dissanayake Chandrajith, 2009). The chemistry of lakes, rivers, oceans, and stream water in many regions is strongly associated with the character and circulation of geologic materials in the watershed. For example, the dominance of glacial till and granitic gneiss rock in the North and East of Big Moose Lake region results in a geologically sensitive terrain distinguished by low alkalinity and chemical compositions of the surface water with only slightly modified from ambient precipitation. On the contrary, widespread deposits of substantial glacial till in the lower part of the system (e.g. Moss-Cascade Valley) allow for much infiltration of precipitation into the groundwater system where weathering reactions increase alkalinity and extensively alters water chemistry. In references to the hypothesis, ‘surficial geology controls the chemistry of surface waters’ holds true as seen in the water composition of different regions as the water chemistry and watershed being determined by the geological facto rs (Dissanayake Chandrajith, 2009). References Drever, J.I., 2000. The Geochemistry of Natural Waters. Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 388p. Frape, S.K., Fritz, P., and McNutt, R.H., 1984. Water-rock interaction and chemistry of Groundwater from the Canadian Shield. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, v. 48, pp. 1617-1627. Heath, R.C., 1990. Basic Ground-Water Hydrology. U.S. Geological Survey Water-Supply Paper 2220, 84p. Hem, J.D., 1992. Study and Interpretation of the Chemical Characteristics of Natural Water. U.S. Geological Survey Water-Supply Paper 2254. Krauskopf, K.B., with Bird, D.K., 1994. Introduction to Geochemistry, 3 ed. McGraw-Hill, rd New York, 640p. Dissanayake, C. B., Chandrajith, R. (2009).  Introduction to medical geology: Focus on tropical environment. Berlin: Springer. Buynevich, I. V. (2011).  Geology and geoarchaeology of the Black Sea Region: Beyond the flood hypothesis. Boulder, Colo: Geological Society of America. Allanson, B. R. (1990).  Inland waters of southern Africa: An ecological perspective. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Gunn, A. M., Babbitt, B. (2001).  The impact of geology on the United States: A reference guide to benefits and hazards. Westport, Conn. [u.a.: Greenwood Press. Rost, A. L., Fritsen, C. H., Davis, C. J. (2011). Distribution of freshwater diatom Didymosphenia geminata in streams in the Sierra Nevada, USA, in relation to water chemistry and bedrock geology.  Hydrobiologia,  665(1), 157-167. Verdonschot, P. P., Spears, B. B., Feld, C. C., Brucet, S. S., Keizer-Vlek, H. H., Borja, A. A., Johnson, R. R. (2013). A comparative review of recovery processes in rivers, lakes, estuarine and coastal waters.  Hydrobiology,  704(1), 453-474. Cooke, G. M., Chao, N. L., Beheregaray, L. B. (2012). Natural selection in the water: freshwater invasion and adaptation by water colour in the Amazonian pufferfish.  Journal Of Evolutionary Biology,  25(7), 1305-1320. Dittman, J., Driscoll, C. (2009). Factors influencing changes in mercury concentrations in lake water and yellow perch ( Perca flavescens) in Adirondack lakes.  Biogeochemistry,  93(3), 179-196. Geology.com. News and Information about Geology and Earth Science. Retrieved from: http://geology.com/ John D. Hem. (1990) Study and Interpretation of the Chemical Characteristics of Natural Water. Third Edition. Department Of The Interior William P. Clark, Secretary U.S. Geological Survey Dallas L. Peck, Director Source document

Prove the Correct Order of Reactivity of Metals :: Metal Reactivity Science Experiments Essays

Prove the Correct Order of Reactivity of Metals Aim The aim of this experiment is to find a method of mathematically analysing the order of metal reactivity. This involved finding a safe, dependant variable which is numerically measurable. After testing all the metals and measuring such a variable, is my hope to set all of the metals into a proven, accurate order of activity. Plan Every element of the periodic table is made up of atoms. Each of the atoms consists of subatomic particles which make up a nucleus and outer orbits. The nucleus contains positively charged protons, and neutrally charged neutrons. These make up the relative mass of the atom. Orbiting the nucleus, attracted by the positive charge of the protons, are the electrons. This are arranged in layers, called energy levels, and have no mass. Only a certain number of electrons fit on each energy level, and it is this which affects the reactivity of certain materials and is also the way that the periodic table is arranged. The number of electrons in the outer energy level is the group in which the element is placed. The first level (nearest the nucleus) will only hold 2 electrons, the second holds 8, and the third also seems to be full when it has 8 electrons. If all of the energy levels in the atom are full populated with electrons, it is said to be stable, and in most cases, is therefore unreactive. Examples of this include the noble (or inert) gases such as neon or argon. However if the outer energy level of the atom is not stable, it will automatically try to either gain or lose electrons to become stable. This is achieved by an ionic reaction. Ionic bonding occurs when the outer atoms of on material changes orbit and joins another material for example: Sodium chloride As you can see, sodium is a group one metal (it has one electron on its outer energy level) so is therefore unstable. Chlorine on the other hand is a group 7 element. It is much easier for sodium to lose its outer electron to become stable, than it is for it to gain 7. The same is true for the chlorine gaining 1 as opposed to losing seven. Therefore the outer electron of the sodium switches orbits to the chlorine. This creates a Na+ ion and a Cl- ion. Because opposites attract, it means that the two substances create an ionic bond and form sodium chloride! Group one metals are the most reactive as they only have one, easily removed, electron. However if you view the periodic table:

Critical Thinking Society Essay

How have critical thinking skills in humans evolved over time? – Since evolution is a process which takes millions of years, The human fossil record reveals that our ancestors were capable of using stones as tools. An ape-like human ancestor living a million years ago was custom manufacturing a variety of stone tools and using fire. Early humans used even more sophisticated tools such as spears and arrows. These â€Å"stone age† people are depicted as â€Å"cavemen† but this belies the fact their culture was fairly sophisticated. The proof is the last stone age culture encountered in modern times – Native American â€Å"Indians†. Many meso-american cities were far larger than european cities during the middle ages. Looking at modern euro-american culture, it is seen the only real difference is technology based on metal instead of stone. All the social institutions are still present, reguardless of the particular style of political system behavior in use. Humans probably have not evolved mentally since they evolved as a separate species. In a sence, it is our technology which is evolving. How have the principles of logic helped shape modern science and technology? – Logical thinking provided a method by which scientific thought could evolve. The general assumption allowed a statement – the presence of (whatever) is always accompanied by (Something else). (Whatever) is present, therefore (Something else) is also present. The ability to move from the solid ground of a known fact to assuming the possibility of another fact allowed a test for the second fact, and allowed thought to outpace knowledge, so that people thought impossible things and found ways to obtain them. How does a critical analysis of one’s society and self contribute to a particular internal and/or external perspective on the world? Critical analysis of self and society of course involves challenging one’s current view of oneself and one’s current view of one’s society (not to mention a society’s view of itself). In order to do this, one must take up a stance that falls outside of one’s habituated perspective. To the extent to which â€Å"perspective† differs from â€Å"horizon†, I’m tempted to say that the horizon would be a circle that surrounds and contains various perspectival circles, such that a horizon is richer than any given perspective but it’s still distinct from other horizons. These other horizons may be represented by circles which either overlap the first but are not synonymous (like the Olympics symbol), or which stand entirely outside each other as â€Å"O O†. Each self could contain within it’s horizon perspectives, and each â€Å"self-horizon† could be a perspective within a social horizon. In other words, each person has the potential of taking up plural perspectives within his/her horizon, and likewise a culture as a whole can take up different perspectives within its horizon.

The Blue Sword CHAPTER SIX

She remembered little more of that day. She settled herself on a heap of cushions a little way from the long table while the king and his men talked; and if they spoke at all of her, she did not know it, but she did notice that none but Corlath ever allowed his eyes to rest on her. The feeling she had had earlier, before she had tasted the Water of Seeing, that the closeness among the king and his men in some way supported her, was gone; she felt lost and miserably alone, and she decided that when there were eighteen people pretending you didn't exist in a small enclosed area, it was worse than two people pretending you didn't exist outside under the sky. The shadows nickered strangely through the tent, and the voices seemed muffled. There was a ringing in her ears – a ringing not like the usual fear-feeling of one's blood hammering through one's body, but a real ringing like that of distant bells. She could almost discern the notes. Or were they human, the shifting tones of s omeone speaking, far away? The taste still on her tongue seemed to muffle her brain. And she was tired, so tired †¦ When his Riders left, Corlath stood looking down at his captured prize. She had fallen asleep, and no wonder; she was smiling a little in her sleep, but it was a sad smile, and it made him unhappy. However much formal honor he showed her, seating her at his left hand, setting his household to serve her as they served him – he grimaced – he knew only too well that by stealing her from her people he had done a thing to be ashamed of, even if he had had no alternative – even if she and the kelar she bore were to do his beloved country some good he could not otherwise perform. Perhaps she could learn to see something of what made the Hills and their people so dear to him as a man, not as a king – ? Perhaps her Gift would bind her to them. Perhaps she would hate them for her lost land and family. He sighed. Forloy's young wife had not wished to hate the Hills, but that had not helped her. Harry woke in the dark. She did not know where she was; the shapes beneath her were not of pillow and mattress, and the odor of the air had nothing in common with Residency air, or Homeland air. For a moment hysteria bubbled up and she was conscious only of quelling it; she could not think, not even to decide why she wished to bottle up the panic – her pride automatically smothered her fear as best it could. Afterward she lay exhausted, and the knowledge of where she was reformed itself, and the smell was of the exotic woods of the carven boxes in the Hill-king's tent. But as she lay on her back and stared into the blackness, the tears began to leak out of her eyes and roll down her cheeks and wet her hair, and she was too tired to resist them. They came ever faster, till she turned over and buried her face in the scratchy cushions to hide the sobs she could not stop. Corlath was a light sleeper. On the other side of the tent he opened his eyes and rolled up on one elbow and looked blindly toward the dark corner where his Outlander lay. Long after Harry had cried herself to sleep again, the Hill-king lay awake, facing the grief he had caused and could not comfort. When Harry woke again, the golden tent flap had been lifted, and sunlight flashed across the thick heavy rugs to spill across her eyes and waken her. She sat up. She was still curled on and around a number of fat cushions; the back of the hand her cheek had lain against was printed with the embroidered pattern of the pillow beneath it. She yawned and stretched, gingerly pulling the knots of midnight fears out of her muscles. One of the men with a mark on his forehead approached her, knelt, and set a small table with pitcher and basin and towels and brushes before her. She saw nothing of Corlath. The tent looked as it had when she had first entered it the day before; the low tables had been removed, and the peak lamp raised again. When she had washed, she was brought a bowl of an unfamiliar cereal, hot and steaming like Homelander porridge, but of no grain she recognized. It was good, and she surprised herself by eating it all with good appetite. She laid down her spoon, and one of the men of the household approached again, bowed, and indicated that she should go out. She felt crumpled, in the same garments she had slept in; but she shook them out as best she could, observed that they didn't seem to wrinkle horribly as Homelander clothing would have done, raised her chin, and marched out – to be met by another man with a pair of boots for her, and a folding stool to sit on while she fumbled with the lacing. She felt a fool, let loose, however involuntarily, in a highly organized community which now wished to organize her too: like the grain of sand that gets into an oyster's shell. What if the grain doesn't want to become a pearl? Is it ever asked to climb out quietly and take up its old position as a b it of ocean floor? Did she want to go back? What did she have to go back to? But what was Dickie thinking of her absence? She had no more tears at present, but her eyelids were as stiff as shutters, and her throat hurt. People were moving hastily across the open space before the king's tent; and as she watched, the outlying tents began to come down. They seemed to float down of their own accord; all was graceful and quiet. If anyone was doing any protracted cursing over the recalcitrance of inanimate objects, it was only under his breath. Her brother should see this. She smiled painfully. She blinked, her eyes adjusting slowly to the bright sunlight. The sky overhead was a cloudless hard blue, a pale metallic blue. It was morning again; she'd slept almost a full day. To the left rose a little series of dunes, so gradually that she only recognized their height by the fact that her horizon, from where she stood, was the tops of them. Somewhere in that direction lay the General Mundy, the Residency, her brother – and farther, much farther, in that same direction, over desert and mountain, plain and sea, lay her Homeland. She felt the sand underfoot, nothing like the springy firm earth of Home, no more than the queer soft boots she wore were like her Homeland boots; and the strange loose weight of her robes pulled on her shoulders. The king's tent was being dismantled in its turn. First the sides were rolled up and secured, and she saw with surprise that the rugs and lamps, chests and cushions, were already gone from inside; all that remained was the sand, curiously smoothed and hollowed from what it had borne. She wondered if they might have rolled her up like an extra bolster if she had not awakened; or if they would have packed up all around her, leaving her on a little island of cushions in a sea of empty sand. The corner posts and the tall central ones folded up on themselves somehow, and the roof sank to the ground with the same stateliness she had admired in the smaller tents. She counted ten of the household men rolling and folding and tying. They stooped as they worked, and the great tent in only minutes was ten neat white-and-black bundles, each a mere armful for one of the men. They walked to a line of horses who stood patiently as their high-framed saddles were piled with boxes and bundles such as t hose the king's tent made. She noticed how carefully each load was arranged, each separate piece secured and tested for balance before the next was settled. At the end all was checked for comfort, and the horse left with a pat on the nose or neck. Horses were the commonest animals in the camp; there were many more horses than people. Even the pack horses were tall and elegant, but she could pick out the riding-horses, for they were the finest and proudest, and their coats shone like gems. There were also dogs: tall long-legged dogs with long narrow beautiful skulls and round dark eyes, and long silky fur to protect them from the sun. Some were haltered in pairs, and all were members of three or four separate groups. Sight-hounds, Harry thought. The groups roamed as freely as the untethered horses, yet showed no more inclination than they to wander from the camp. She noticed with interest that a few of the pack horses were tied in pairs, like the dogs, and reflected that perhaps it was a training method, a younger beast harnessed to an older, which could teach it manners. There were cats too. But these were not the small domestic lap-sized variety; these were as lean and long-legged as the dogs. Their eyes were green or gold or silver, and their coats were mottled brown and amber and black. One animal looked almost spotted, black on brown, while the next looked almost striped, fawn-pale on black. Some wore collars, leather with silver or copper fittings, but no leashes, and each went its solitary way, ignoring any other cats, dogs, or horses that might cross its path. One came over to Harry where she stood; she held her breath and thought of tigers and leopards. It viewed her nonchalantly, then thrust its head under her hand. It was a moment before Harry recovered herself enough to realize that her hand was trembling because the cat was vibrating as it purred. She stroked it gingerly and the purr grew louder. The fur was short and fine and very thick; when she tried, delicately, to part it, she could not see the skin. The cat had very long blond eyela shes and it looked up at her through them, green eyes half closed. She wondered how all the animals got on together: were there ever any fights? And did the big cats ever steal one of the green-and-blue parrots that rode on a few of the Hillfolk's shoulders? The tents were all down, and she was amazed at the numbers of beasts and people that were revealed. She wondered if the people were all men but herself, thinking of the attempt by the men of the household to wait on her at her bath the evening before. She could not tell, now, by looking, for everyone wore a robe similar to her own, and most wore hoods; and only a few wore beards. â€Å"Lady,† said a voice she knew, and she turned and saw Corlath, and Fireheart followed him. â€Å"Another long ride?† she said, feeling a flush in her cheeks for being called lady by the Hill-king. â€Å"Yes, another long ride, but we need not travel so quickly.† She nodded, and a smile came and went on the king's face, so quickly that she did not see it, as he realized that she would not plead, nor ask questions. â€Å"You will need this,† he said, and handed her a hood like the one he and most everyone else were wearing. She stood turning it over helplessly in her hands, for it was little more than a long tapered tube of soft material, and not too plainly meant as one thing or another to someone who had never seen one before. He took it away from her again and put it on her, then produced a scarf and showed her how to wrap it in place. â€Å"It grows easier with practice,† he said. â€Å"Thank you,† she said. Another voice spoke behind them, and both turned; a man stood with another horse at his heels. This man was dressed in brown, and wore leggings and a tunic above his tall boots and bore a small white mark on his right cheek; and Corlath told her that so the men of the horse, the grooms, dressed; men of the hunt, who cared for the cats and dogs, were dressed similarly, but their belts were red, and they wore red scarves over their hoods and their white mark of office was on the left cheek. â€Å"I – I thought all the Hillfolk wore sashes,† Harry said hesitantly. â€Å"No,† Corlath answered readily enough; â€Å"only those who also may carry swords.† The brown-clad man turned to the horse he had brought them. â€Å"His name is Red Wind, Rolinin,† Corlath said; he was another red bay, though not so bright as Fireheart. â€Å"For the present, you will ride him.† She speculated, a little nervously, about the for the present. She was pleased at the idea of not bumping on somebody else's saddlebow, but as she looked up at the tall horse, and he looked kindly down on her, she collected her courage and said, â€Å"I – I am accustomed to bit and bridle.† She thought, I am accustomed to stirrups too, but I can probably cope without them – at least if nothing too exciting occurs. He looks like he'll have nice gaits †¦ Oh dear. â€Å"Yes,† said Corlath in his inscrutable voice, and Harry looked up at him in dismay. â€Å"Red Wind will teach you how we of the Hills ride.† She hesitated a minute longer, but couldn't think of anything further to say that wouldn't be too humiliating, like â€Å"I'm scared.† So when the brown man went down on one knee and cupped his hands for her foot, she stepped up and was lifted gently into the saddle. No reins. She looked at her hands as if they should be somewhere else, rubbed them briefly down the legs, and then laid them across the rounded pommel like stunned rabbits brought home from a hunt. Red Wind's ears flicked back at her and his back shifted under her. She closed her legs delicately around his barrel and he waited, listening; she squeezed gently and he stepped gravely forward; she sat back and he stopped. Perhaps they would get along. Corlath mounted while she was arranging her hands; I suppose they'll expect me to learn to mount without help too, she thought irascibly; when she looked up from Red Wind's obedient ears Fireheart moved off, and Red Wind willingly followed. They traveled for some days. She meant to keep count, but she did not have the presence of mind immediately to find a bit of leather or rock to scratch the days on as they passed, and somewhere around four or five or six she lost count. The days of travel continued for some time after the four or five or six; every muscle in her body ached and protested from the unaccustomed exercise, after months of soft living at the Residency and aboard ship. She was grateful for her weariness, however, for it granted her heavy sleep without dreams. She developed saddlesores, and gritted her teeth and ignored them, and rather than getting worse as she had expected, they eased and then went away altogether, and with them the aches and pains. Her old skill in the saddle came back to her; she did not miss the stirrups except while mounting – she still needed someone to be a mounting-block for her every day – and slowly she learned to guide her patient horse without reins. She could bind her boots to her legs and her hood round her head as deftly – almost – as though she had been doing these things all her life. She learned to eat gracefully with her fingers. She met four women who were part of Corlath's traveling camp; they all four wore sashes. She learned the name of the friendly cat: Narknon. She often found her keeping her feet warm when she woke up in the morning. Narknon also, for all her carnivorous heritage, had a taste for porridge. Harry continued to eat at the king's table for the evening meal, with the eighteen Riders and Corlath; she still sat at the king's left hand, and she was still politely served and equably ignored. She began to understand, or at least to suspect, that Corlath kept her near him not only because the Hillfolk were not accustomed to dealing with enemy prisoners, but more because he was hoping to make her feel like a respected guest – he was quick to answer her questions, partly perhaps because she did not abuse the privilege; and there was often almost diffidence in his manner when he offered her something: a new cloak, or a piece of fruit of a sort she had never seen before. He wants me to like it here, she thought. She still slept in the king's tent, but a corner was now modestly curtained off for her, and when she woke in the morning and put the curtains back, Corlath was already gone. One of the men of the household would see her, and bring her towels and water, and breakfast. She grew fond of the porridge; sometimes they made it into little flat cakes, and fried them, and put honey over them. The honey was made from flowers she had never seen nor smelled; the rich exotic fragrance of it set her dreaming. She never asked Corlath why she was here, or what her future was to be. In the mornings, after breakfast, while the camp was broken, or, if they were staying an extra day while messengers came from nowhere to talk to the king, she rode Red Wind and, as Corlath had told her, taught herself, or let the horse teach her, to ride as the Hillfolk rode. After her riding-lesson, if they were not traveling that day, she wandered through the camp, and watched the work going forward: everything was aired and washed or shaken out or combed, and the beasts were all brushed till they gleamed. No one, horse or dog or cat or human being, ever tried to stop the Outlander from wandering anywhere in particular, or watching anything in particular; occasionally she was even allowed to pick up a currycomb or polishing-cloth or rug-beater, but it was obvious that she was so permitted out of kindness, for her help was never needed. But she was grateful for the kindness. She spoke her few words of Hill-speech: May I? And Thank you, and the Hillfolk smiled at her and said, Our pr ivilege, slowly and carefully, back to her. Sometimes she watched the hunts ride out; the dogs hunted in their groups, the cats alone or occasionally in pairs. There did not seem to be any order to those who rode with them, other than the presence of at least one man of the hunt; and she never saw any return without a kill: desert hares, or the small digging orobog – Corlath told her the names – or the great horned dundi that had to be hung on a pole and carried between two horses. She was homesick in unexpected spasms so strong that Red Wind, who was a faithful old plug by Hill standards and could be trusted to children and idiots, would feel her freeze on his back, and toss his head uncomfortably and prance. She had not wept herself to sleep since her first night in the king's tent and she thought, carefully, rationally, that it was hard to say what exactly she was homesick for: the Homeland seemed long past, and she did not miss her months at the Residency in Istan. She recalled the faces of Sir Charles and Lady Amelia with a pang, and she missed her brother anxiously, and worried about what he must think about his lost sister. She found she also missed the wise patient understanding of Jack Dedham; but she thought of him with a strange sort of peacefulness, as if his feeling for his adopted country would transcend the seeming impossibility of what had happened to her, and he would know that she was well. That sickness of dislocation came to her most often w hen she was most at ease in the strange adventure she was living. She might be staring at the line of Hills before them, closer every day, watching how sharply the edges of them struck into the sky; Red Wind at Fireheart's heels, the desert wind brushing her cheek and the sun on her shoulders and hooded head; and suddenly she would be gasping with the thing she called homesickness. It would strike her as she sat at the king's table, cross-legged, eating her favorite cheese, sweet and brown and crumbly, listening wistfully to the conversation she still could not understand, beyond the occasional word or phrase. I'm missing what I don't have, she thought late one night, squirming on her cushions. It's nothing to do with what I should be homesick for – Jack would understand, the oldest colonel still active, looking across the desert at the Hills. It's that I don't belong here. It doesn't matter that I'm getting burned as dark as they are, that I can sit a horse all day and not complain. It doesn't matter even that their Water of Sight works in me as it does in only a few of their own. It is only astonishing that it would work in one not of the Hills; it does not make that one any more of the Hills than she was before. There was a certain bitter humor to lying awake wishing for something one cannot have, after lying awake not so long ago wishing for the opposite thing that one had just lost. Not a very useful sort of adaptability, this, she thought. But, her thought added despairingly, what kind of adaptability – or genius – would be useful to me? She traced her life back to her childhood, and for the first time in many years recalled the temper tantrums that she had grown out of so early it was hard to remember them clearly; but she did remember that they had frightened even her, dimly, still a baby in her crib, realizing there was something not quite right about them. They had scared two nursemaids into leaving; it had been her mother who had at last successfully coped, grimly, with her and them. That memory brought into focus another memory she also had pushed aside many years ago: the memory, or knowledge, of not-quite-rightness that grew up after the tantrums had passed; and with that knowledge had also grown an odd non-muscular kind of control. She had thought at the time, with a child's first wistfulness upon being faced with approaching adulthood, that this was a control that everyone learned; but now, lying in the desert dark, she was not so sure. There was something in her new, still inexplicable and unforeseeable life in the Hills that touched and tried to shape that old long-ignored sense of restraint; and something in her that eagerly reached out for the lesson, but could not – yet – quite grasp it or make use of it. There was, too, a reality to her new life that her old life had lacked, and she realized with a shock that she had never truly loved or hated, for she had never seen the world she had been used to living in closely enough for it to evoke passion in her. This world was already more vivid to her, exhilaratingly, terrifyingly more vivid, than the sweet green country, affectionately but indistinctly recalled, of her former lif e. She did not have much appetite for breakfast the next morning, and fed hers to Narknon, who gave a pleased burp and went back to sleep again till the men of the household routed her out when they took down the king's tent. They were nearly to the foothills by the time they halted that evening. The scrub around them had begun to produce the occasional real leaf, and the occasional real leaf was green. For the first time, there was an open stream that ran past their camp, instead of the small secret desert springs; and Harry had a real bath in the big silver basin for the first time since her first evening with the camp, for there had been little water to spare since then. This time the men of the household left towels and a clean yellow robe for her, and left her, as soon as her bath was full. They made camp behind a ridge that ran into what was certainly itself a hill. The tents were pitched around a clear space at the center, with the king's tent at one edge of it. That clear space always held a fire in the evenings, but tonight the fire was built up till it roared and flung itself taller than the height of a man; and as everyone's duties were completed, all came and sat around it till they ringed it. The dogs' pale coats turned red and cinnamon in the firelight; the cats' shadowy pelts were more mysterious than ever. The wall of the king's tent facing the fire was rolled up, and Harry and the king and his Riders sat at the open edge and stared at the fire with the rest. After a time no more dark figures came to join the circle; the fire shadows fell and sidled and swam so that Harry could not guess how many people there were. The fire itself began to burn down till it was no more than the kind of glorious bonfire she and her brother had had now and again when they were children and the weather and their parents' mood had conspired together in their favor. Then the singing began. There were several stringed instruments like lutes, and several wooden pipes for accompaniment and harmony. She recognized ballads even when she could not understand the words, and she wished again that she could understand, and fidgeted on her rug, and glanced at Corlath. He looked back at her, intercepting her frustration, and while there was nothing particularly encouraging about that look, still there was nothing particularly discouraging about it either – as was usual with the looks he gave her now; as was also usual, there was an edge of wistfulness, or sheepishness, in his glance. He had either lost or, as she thought more likely, learned to restrain the slightly resentful puzzlement she had seen the night she had drunk the Water of Sight. She stood up and went over to him and sat down beside him, and pulled up her knees and put her chin on them and stared at the fire, and listened to the words she could not understand. She knew that there had to be at least one more person in the camp who spoke Homelander, the man who had acted as Corlath's interpreter – and, as Peterson had guessed, unnecessarily – at the Residency, but she had never learned who that man was. Someone else who might have spoken to her, and taught her some more Hill words, that she might be able to talk to those around her – might be able to translate the words of the songs they were singing now. But someone who had chosen not to make himself known to her; someone who liked his skill so little that he felt no pity for her isolation: she, an Outlander, who did not belong to the desert and the Hills. Corlath was watching her face as these thoughts went through her mind, and perhaps he read something of them there, for he said without prompting: â€Å"They sing of what is past, hundreds of years past, when the possession of kelar was so common it was hardly thought a Gift, any more than the length of your nose is a Gift. â€Å"Those given the kelar are far fewer today than they were then. I – we – believe that we are soon to learn at our gravest cost the worth of what we have lost.† He thought, wearily, looking at her and unable to read her expression, What does she see? What do we look like to her? And with a flash of anger he thought, Why is it so arranged that I must hope for the comprehension of an Outlander? Why must it be an Outlander who carries so precious a Gift? A Gift she may choose to repudiate or – or use against us, who need the strength so sorely? Harry hugged her knees closer, and for a moment she saw again a bright narrow thread of riders trotting up a mountain way. So I have the Gift, she thought, but of what use is it to see uninterpretable visions? She came back to herself as Corlath said: â€Å"We sing because we have returned to our Hills; tonight is the first night we sleep again in their shadow. â€Å"Listen. They will sing a ballad of Lady Aerin, Dragon-Killer.† Harry listened, listened hard, with the muscles of her back and of her thighs, as if the Hill-speech were a fractious horse she might tame; and out of the firelight came a figure, wavering with the leap and flicker of the flames, and with hair that was fire itself. A tall broad-shouldered figure with a pale face, and in its right hand it held a long slim blade that glittered blue. Harry stared till her eyes felt as dry as sand, and then the figure's face swam into focus, and it was a woman's face, and it smiled at her. But it didn't smile, it grinned, the wry affectionate grin of an elder sister; and Harry's head swam with love and despair. Then the woman shook her head gently, and her aureole of hair flamed and rippled about her, and she reached out her empty left hand, and Harry found herself on her hands and knees, reaching her hand back. But a gust of wind came from nowhere and whipped the fire as though it were an unruly dog, and the figure vanished. Harry fell where she had knelt, and pressed her face to the earth. One real dog sat up and howled. Corlath picked her up as gently as if she were a baby, fallen down after its first steps; and she found there were tears running down her face. He stood up, holding her in his arms, and she cared nothing but that Lady Aerin, Firehair and Dragon-Killer, had come to her and then left her again, more alone than she had ever been before. She threw her arms around the Hill-king's neck and buried her face in his shoulder and sobbed. And Corlath, holding her, her tears on his neck, felt his resentment waver and dim and fall to ashes; and he felt pity instead for the Outlander, as he had felt pity when she tasted the Meeldtar. The Gift had been a hard enough thing for him, he who had grown up with it, had always known it existed and been trained from childhood in its use, or at least its acceptance. He had had his father to tell him what to expect, and his father had not scorned him when he wept as the Outlander now wept; had, in fact, cradled and comforted him and soothed the headaches the kelar brought. He would help this girl now, as much as he might, stranger and thief as he might be to her. He would do what he could. Harry woke up the next morning in her usual corner, behind the usual curtains, her face still smudged with dirt and tears, and she remembered what she had done rather than what she had seen, and she went hot with shame and swallowed hard, wondering if she dared show herself outside her curtains, even for water to wash in. She could not think about seeing Corlath again at all. She thought, He must have laid the sleep on me again, as he did when he first took me away; put me to sleep like an unruly child because I behaved like an unruly child. Narknon didn't care; she walked up Harry's legs and rubbed her head against Harry's smudgy face, and Harry blinked hard and petted her fiercely. She put back her curtains with an effort, and washed her face, and ate her breakfast as she might have eaten wood chips, silent and stony-faced. A voice broke in on her sorry reflections, and she looked up, surprised, and was still more surprised to see one of the Riders: the short square grim man she had noticed during her first meal in the king's tent: the one man who had tasted the Water and made no sign. He spoke to her again. Whatever the words were, they had the inflection of â€Å"Good morning,† so she said, â€Å"Good morning.† Some expression passed lightly over his face, and still he looked at her till she began to wonder if â€Å"Good morning† in their language sounded like a terrible insult and he was now considering whether to strike her dead on the spot or spare her ignorance. Maybe he was only musing on how best to handle an unruly child. But he spoke to her again, slowly, patiently, and she was distracted from her shame of the night before. He broke his words down into syllables; so she took a deep breath and said them back to him. This time the flicker of expression was definitely kin to a smile, although she would never have seen it if she had not been watching his face so closely. He corrected her accent, and she said the phrase again, and this time apparently she said it properly; for next he bowed, laid a hand upon his chest, and said, â€Å"Mathin.† She said â€Å"Mathin† back at him, and she knew his name already from Corlath's speaking it and his answering. Then he stretched his hand out till the tips of his fingers did not quite touch her collarbone. â€Å"Harry,† she said, thinking that the two-syllable version of her impossible name would keep them both out of trouble; and Richard wasn't there to disapprove. â€Å"Hari?† he said, a little taken aback; and she nodded, and made hi m a small bow. It must have been a long day for Mathin. She knew he was one of the eighteen Riders, yet he did nothing till sunset but take her around the camp and touch various objects and speak their names. She also learned some useful all-purpose verbs, and the names – or at least she heard the names and tried to remember them – of about half of the men who sat around Corlath's table. She knew Faran and Innath already, for she had picked out their names from Corlath's calling of them, as she had Mathin's. They met her eyes as they were introduced, and quietly bowed, as if she had nothing to do with the awkward baggage their king had taken from the Outlander town in their company a few weeks ago; as if they were seeing her for the first time. Forloy was the man with the scar on his chin; Dapsim rode the black mare who won the horseraces often held in the evenings, till the other riders would no longer let her run. She did not see Corlath that day, nor the next. The camp remained whe re it was, in the shadow of the Hills, though the evening fires were small again, and there was no more singing. The hunting-beasts went out every day, and returned laden with a far wider variety of wildlife than the desert had offered. Harry learned that Narknon hunted alone, and was famous for permitting no other beast near her; she occasionally made friends with a human being, but she was very choosy about such friendships. Harry felt flattered. As the days passed, lean faces and flanks grew a bit plumper on men and beasts; but Narknon still begged for her porridge. Mathin came for Harry after breakfast each morning. By the end of the third day she was speaking in sentences, simple, painful, and ungrammatical ones; but she found that certain Hill words were creeping into her Homelander vocabulary and staying there; and the few people besides Mathin she tried to speak to stopped to listen to her and to answer. She was no longer invisible, and that was the best of all. She was fascinated by the specialties of the language she was learning; there were, for example, a number of kinds of tent. The king's great tent, with its internal grove of poles to hold it up, was called a zotar, the only one in this traveling camp. The smaller tents, where most of the people were housed, were called the barkash; the stable tents were pituin. Then there were several terms she didn't have quite straightened out yet that referred to how the thing was made, how many corners it had, made of what material, and so on. A dalgut was a cheap, poorly made tent; there were no dalguti in the king's camp, and to refer to another man's tent as a dalgut, if it wasn't one, was a profound insult. She woke up earlier than usual on the morning of the fourth day of Corlath's absence, and, despite Narknon's protests, went outside to stare at the eastern greyness that heralded the swift desert dawn. She heard the desert lark's song, a little speckled brown bird the Hillfolk called a britti. The camp was astir already; several of the men whose names she could recall hailed her as Hari-sol. She'd heard this the last two days and wondered if it was a term of respect, of definition, or a way of spinning out a name she could see did not meet with unqualified approval. As the early light flowed down into the mountains, she saw the trees and rocky ridges pick themselves out of the shadows and assert their individuality. She didn't notice till they rode into the center of camp that Corlath and three companions had returned. She turned around on her heel as she heard his voice, but her attention was distracted at once. Corlath still sat on Fireheart, who stood as still as a great red rock; and beside them stood another horse, riderless, as tall as Fireheart and a stallion like him, but golden, a chestnut as gold as the kicking flames of the bonfire three nights ago. She walked toward them silently, her bare feet in the still-cool sandy earth, but the chestnut horse turned his head and looked at her. She heard Corlath murmur something as she drew near, and at his words the horse took a step toward her, and lowered his head till she was looking into a calm, mahogany-brown eye. She raised her hands and cupped them, and she felt his warm breath, and his s oft nose touched her fingers. Corlath spoke aloud and a man of the horse appeared at once, carrying a saddle, golden leather only a few shades darker than the horse, with red stitching; and he set it delicately on the chestnut's back. The horse ignored him, not even shuddering his golden skin as the saddle settled into place; but he lipped Harry's fingers, and leaned his cheek against her shoulder. â€Å"I brought him back for you,† Corlath said, and she raised her eyes and found his resting on her; â€Å"I seem to have chosen well,† he said, and he smiled. The brown-clad man had girthed up the saddle and stood watching her expectantly. â€Å"Come, we will try his paces,† said Corlath. It wasn't till she was tossed into the saddle and felt the great horse quiver under her as her legs found their places against the long supple flaps of the saddle that she realized that Corlath had spoken to her in the Hill tongue. It was a glorious morning; more glorious than any she'd known since she had awakened as a disheveled huddle on the lee side of a scraggy little dune – more glorious than any since she'd set sail from the Homeland. â€Å"His name is Sungold,† Corlath told her, and this he translated. â€Å"Sungold,† she said. â€Å"Tsornin.† Corlath sent Fireheart forward at a long-striding trot, as though they would leap into the dawn; and as soon as her legs closed against the big chestnut's sides he surged forward to follow. She was, for the first few minutes, fearful of her own lack of skill, and of the strength of the big horse; but she found that they understood each other. She felt half grateful, half ashamed, of the time and patience the good Red Wind had spent on her; and at the same time she felt almost uneasy that it was too simple, that she understood too readily. But she was too caught up in the beauty of it to wish to doubt it long. If she thought of it at all, she drove it out of her head at once: didn't she deserve something for all her bruises, of both body and spirit, over the last weeks? She could think of nothing better than the feel of Sungold's mane as it washed over her hands. When the sun was almost overhead, and its rays were dazzling when they reflected off Tsornin's bright neck, and the emptiness of her stomach was beginning to force itself into her attention despite everything, Corlath said, â€Å"Enough,† and wheeled Fireheart back toward camp. Sungold waited for her signal, and she stood a moment, first looking at Fireheart's quarters jogging away from them and then up, where a brown hawk swung on an updraft, high overhead. Just to test the magnificence of her power, she kneed her horse a half-turn to the left and shot him off at a gallop; and just as he reached the peak of his speed she brought him back to a gentle canter, circled once, and sent him after Corlath, who had paused and was watching her antics. They stopped beside Fireheart and his rider, and the two stallions nodded to each other. Harry expected a lecture on frivolity, or something, and lowered her eyes to Sungold's withers; but Corlath said nothing. She looked up again as she heard the ring of metal on metal; Corlath had drawn the sword that hung at his side. She watched, surprised, as he held it, point up, and the sun glared fiercely on it. She remembered that this morning, as he rode into camp, he had been carrying it, the first time she had ever seen him armed with anything more ostentatiously threatening than a long dagger, or the slim short knives all the Hillfolk carried to cut up their food and perform any minor tasks where something with a sharp point was necessary. She'd forgotten about it as soon as she'd noticed Sungold; and now that she saw it more closely she decided she didn't much like the look of it. This was obviously a war-sword; it was much too unwieldy for anything but serious hacking and hewing. Corlath took the deadly thing in his left hand and handed it to her, hilt first. â€Å"Take it.† She grasped it, warily, and when Corlath let go it did not knock her out of the saddle, but it tried. â€Å"Lift it,† he said. And as she tried, â€Å"You've never held a sword.† â€Å"No.† She lifted it as if it were a snake that would crawl up its own tail and bite her. Corlath edged Isfahel out of harm's way as her arm and shoulder experimented with this new thing. She swung it in a short half-arc, and Tsornin came suddenly to life, and bounced forward on his hind legs, neighing. â€Å"Ouch,† she said, as he came to earth again; his ears were tipped back toward her, and all his muscles were tense. â€Å"Sungold's a war-horse,† Corlath said mildly. â€Å"You're giving him ideas.† She turned to glower at him, and he rode up beside her and took the sword back. There was a gleam of humor in his eye as he returned her glower; and they turned back toward camp together. He said something that she didn't quite catch, and as she turned to him to ask him to repeat it, Fireheart leaped forward into a gallop that flattened out to full stretch at once. After a moment's shock she recognized the challenge, and Sungold bolted after them, and gained ground till her face was flicked by Fireheart's streaming tail, and then Sungold's nose drew even with Corlath's toe; and then they were sweeping into the camp, and the horses steadied down to a canter, and then a walk. Their nostrils showed red as they breathed, and Sungold turned away from the camp, asking for more; but Harry said, â€Å"I don't think so,† and Sungold heaved a sigh and followed docilely at Fireheart's heels. It was only when she dismounted that she realized she was still barefoot. Corlath and Harry had b reakfast together, on one square of the long table. Harry did not speak, except to Narknon, who was inclined to be sulky; and Corlath's attention was for the men who came to speak with him, about the minor things that had gone wrong in his absence, and about messages they had received for him; and Harry understood much of what they said, and wondered if Corlath cared that it was no longer entirely safe to talk secrets around his Outlander. After they had eaten, a man of the household entered the zotar and handed the king a long thin bundle wrapped in linen. He bowed and retired; and Corlath shook the thing free of its covering and held up another sword. This one was appreciably smaller than the one he himself wore, but Harry still watched it with dislike. Corlath ran a quick hand over the scabbard with the linen cloth and then offered her, again, the hilt. She took it reluctantly, and rather than drawing it smoothly out, she backed up awkwardly, so that it rang free with a sullen cl unk. â€Å"You'll have to do better than that,† said Corlath; and she was sure that he was amused. â€Å"Why?† she said, anger beginning to uncoil itself somewhere deep inside her and make its way to the surface. â€Å"Why? What have swords and – † she gulped, for she loved Sungold already – â€Å"war-horses to do with me?† He came a step or two closer to her as she stood with the point of the sword unhandily dug into the heaped carpets, and her arm out, as if to keep the undesired object as far from her as she could; and he looked, thoughtfully, into her eyes. â€Å"It is because of what you have seen,† he replied. â€Å"When you tasted the Water of Sight you saw a war-party coming to battle; I and all my Riders heard you cry out what you saw – in the ancient tongue of our forebears here, the tongue that was spoken when Damar was one land, a great and green land, before †¦ â€Å" Before my people came, she thought, but she was not going to say it aloud if he was not. â€Å"And several days past the entire camp saw the Lady Aerin come out of the fire to greet you, carrying the Blue Sword, Gonturan, with which she won back the Hero's Crown and defeated the armies of the North.† He hesitated. â€Å"Aerin had not been seen since my father's father's day; and yet she has always looked after her country well, since she first rode out to face the Black Dragon, before Gonturan had come to her hand; and our dearest legends speak of her.† The bright bubbles of anger in her eyes burst and disappeared. She bowed her head; then bent her elbow and brought the sword under her eyes. The long wicked edge of it winked at her. It had a silver handle, nearly plain, with a few faint graceful scrolls on the underpart of the hand-guard, where it met the hilt. She stared at them unhappily: the sweep and arch of them seemed to her a more likely ornament for a church pew than a sword. Her wrist began to quiver with the unaccustomed weight. He said, as gently as he could: â€Å"Here, anyone who is granted the Gift of Seeing is given to what they see; it is thought to be a guide, a direction, a help sent by the gods; or by the heroes of our past greatness, who still care what happens to their children's children. Children now sip the Water when they meet their tenth birthday, in the hope that they may be told what apprenticeship they are most fit for. Many see nothing, for, as I have told you, the Water does not work for many people; and then the simpler considerations of parentage and availability are allowed to decide. But all our priests were given Sight of the priesthood on their tenth birthday; each of my Riders saw himself carrying a sword †¦ many of them will only choose a war-horse the color they saw themselves riding in the vision.† She broke out frantically: â€Å"But this is nothing to do with me. I am an Outlander, not of your Hills at all. If it is war I have seen, my people have feared war too; it is not strange that even I should feel it. This thing you have done to me, I – † She choked off, for she had heard herself speaking: Outlander she had instinctively said, and she was speaking swiftly in the Hill tongue that she had only – or so she had thought and now desperately was not sure – begun to learn, haltingly, a few days before. She heaved a breath that had she been a year younger might have been a sob; but it was not. She stood, trembling, holding the sword, waiting for it to speak to her too, to tell her her awful destiny. Corlath took her right wrist in his hand and then turned her around till she was standing next to him; he rearranged her fingers on the hilt, curled her thumb under it for her. She felt at once, wearily, that this was the way it was supposed to be held; and wondered if swordsmanship, like riding a war-stallion and speaking a language strange to her, was suddenly going to awaken in her blood like a disease. â€Å"Lady,† Corlath said over her shoulder, his right hand still supporting her wrist, â€Å"I know it is difficult for you. Perhaps this may make it easier: you have given my people hope by your presence, by your visions, by your very foreignness. It is the first hope we have had since we knew that the Northerners would come. We need that hope, my lady. It is so nearly the only thing we have.† She pulled away from his hand on her arm so that she could turn and look up at him. She stared, appalled, and he looked gently down at her. A frown collected slowly on his brow. â€Å"What is it they call you – Hari? That cannot be your name.† She grimaced. â€Å"No. it's a – † She did not know the Hill term for nickname and her mysterious sixth sense didn't seem to want to provide it for her. â€Å"It's a short-name. I don't like my real name.† â€Å"And it is?† There was a pause. â€Å"Angharad,† she said finally. He turned this over on his tongue a few times. â€Å"We will call you Harimad,† he said. â€Å"Harimad-sol, for you are of high rank. Few See so clearly that others too may see, as all saw Aerin-sol come out of the fire. â€Å"Try to have faith: even in these things that are strange to you. My kelar told me to bring you here, and your kelar speaks through you now. Lady, I know no more of your fate than that; but I believe, as do all the people in this camp, that your fate is important to us. And Aerin, who has long been the friend of her people, has given you her protection.† That does not make Aerin my friend, she thought sourly, but when she remembered the elder-sister grin Aerin had given her, she could not believe ill of her. And Corlath's kelar told him to bring me here. Oh dear. I suppose that explains something. Harimad. Mad Harry. I wish Aerin would stay long enough to talk to me – tell me what is going on. She looked up at him and tried to smile. It was a gallant effort; it was even almost a smile. But Corlath's gold-flecked brown eyes saw more than just the gallantry, and his heart went out to her; and he turned away from her and clapped his hands, and a man of the household b rought the hot brown drink Harry had first tasted behind a scrubby small sand hill, barefoot and in her Homelander dressing-gown, and that she had learned since to call malak. That evening Corlath and the Riders and Harimad-sol ate a great dinner of many dishes, and Harry made first acquaintance with the Hill mustard made of the jictal seeds, which burned out not only her mouth and tongue, but her throat and stomach lining; and the front of the zotar was rolled up, and outside much of the rest of the camp sat on rugs before small low tables and ate also, under the moon and the white stars. Harry began pulling nervously at her sleeves and twiddling the ends of her belt as the end of the meal approached; there was a tension hanging over the camp that she did not like, and she hoped that the tooled leather bag was not to put in an appearance tonight. It did not, but she suspected Corlath of eyeing her nervousness wryly. The conversation went too quickly for her to catch all of it – or perhaps her sixth sense had overstrained itself and was resting – but she understood that the purpose of the journey they had been on was to discover how well, or ill, prepared the many small mountain villages, north, south, and east of the great central desert, were for holding off Northerners; and how many horses, arms and warriors, supplies and supply transport, each could provide. It had not been a very cheerful journey, not least for the western excursion into Outlander territory, where a stubborn and pompous old man had refused to listen to the truth; but Corlath had expected what he found and – she thought – saw no use in being discouraged. They were near the end of their trek now: in the Hills before them, although still several days' journey hence, was Corlath's city, where his palace lay, and where what there was of a standing army was quartered. Harry rather thought, from the way they referred to it, that â€Å"the City† was the only city in Corlath's realm; his people were not much interested in building and maintaining and living in cities, beyond the king's own, which had the advantage of being thick with kelar. But the Hillfolk were an independent lot; they preferred to hold their own bits of land and work them, and neither cities nor positions in a regular army appealed to them. As she heard the word often, Harry was beginning to understand better what the word kelar indicated. It was something like magic; a Gift was the specific manifestation of kelar in a particular human being. Kelar was also something like a charm or a sorcery that hung in the air in a few places in the Hills; and one of those places was the City, where certain things might happen and other things be forbidden to happen, in ways quite unlike the usual physical laws. When all else was lost, the Hillfolk could retreat to the City; if the Northerners took or laid waste to all else, a few might live still in the City, for in it was some of the strength of the Damar of old. She began to speculate about the City, to look forward to seeing it. Around her the Riders and their king spoke of repairs to be made, and new forging to be done, and the best blacksmiths – dhogos – and leatherworkers – parisi – in the Hills. Narknon had her front half in Harry's lap, and was purring to rattle the bones of them both. It was very late. The Riders stared at their empty cups, the men outside stared at the stars; Harry was falling asleep, still listening to the hum in the air, and still unable to account for it. â€Å"Mathin,† said Corlath, and Harry twitched and woke up. Mathin looked up the table, and his eyes rested briefly on the golden-haired girl in the maroon robe before he looked at his king. â€Å"The laprun trials will be held six weeks from tomorrow on the plains before the City.† Mathin knew this perfectly well, but out of the corner of his eye he saw the girl look up at Corlath, puzzled, and then glance down the table at her patient language teacher. â€Å"Harimad-sol will ride in them.† Mathin nodded; he had expected this, and, having taken some measure of Hari in the days past, was not displeased. Harimad-sol herself swallowed rather sharply, but found she wasn't too surprised either; and after a day of war-horses and swords could guess the sort of thing the trials (what was a laprun?) would prove to be. Poor Mathin. She wondered what he thought of the idea-six weeks to knock the rawest of beginners, even if kelar-guided, into shape – and resigned herself to not knowing. â€Å"We will ride out two hours before dawn tomorrow,† said Mathin. Six weeks, thought Harry. How much can you learn in six weeks, even if Aerin is keeping an eye on you?