AcharyaChanakya/simple-wikipedia huggingface dataset:
Numerous mental and social interventions can be useful in treating schizophrenia. Such interventions include various types of therapy, community-based treatments, supported employment, skills training, token economic interventions, and mental interventions for drug or alcohol use and weight management. Family therapy or education, which addresses the whole family system of an individual, might reduce a return of symptoms or the need for hospitalizations (having to go into hospital.) There is growing evidence for the effectiveness of cognitive behavioral therapy (also known as “talk therapy”) .
The British national guidelines for treatment (NICE) recommend for both people are at risk of getting schizophrenia and people who have got it, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and family therapy. Getting support from people who have become well from schizophrenia is also strongly recommended.
Schizophrenia has great human and economic costs. The condition results in a decreased life expectancy of 12 to 15 years, primarily because of its association with being overweight, not exercising, and smoking cigarettes. An increased rate of suicide (a person killing themself) plays a lesser role. These differences in life expectancy increased between the 1970s and 1990s.
Schizophrenia is a major cause of disability, with active psychosis ranked as the third-most-disabling condition. Approximately three-fourths of people with schizophrenia have an ongoing disability with symptoms that keep coming back. Some people do recover completely and others function well in society. Most people with schizophrenia live independently, with community support. In people with a first episode of serious mental symptoms, 42 percent have a good long-term outcome, 35 percent have an intermediate outcome and 27 percent have a poor outcome. Outcomes for schizophrenia appear better in the developing world than in the developed world, although that conclusion has been questioned.
The suicide rate of people who have schizophrenia is estimated to be about 4.9 percent, most often occurring in the period following the first appearance of symptoms or the first hospital admission. 20 to 40 percent try to kill themselves at least once.
Schizophrenia and smoking have shown a strong association in studies worldwide. Use of cigarettes is especially high in individuals who have schizophrenia, with estimates ranging from 80 to 90 percent of these people being regular smokers, compared to 20 percent of the general population. Those individuals who smoke tend to smoke heavily and to smoke cigarettes with a high nicotine content.
Research continues on schizophrenia. In the spring of 2013, genetics associations were shown between five major psychiatric disorders: autism, ADHD, bipolar disorder, depression, and schizophrenia per recent study. In the summer of 2013, for the first time, brain tissue development was replicated in three dimensions by scientists cloning a human "mini-brain" using stem cells. This could help with schizophrenia and autism neurological research (research related to the brain.)
As of 2011, schizophrenia affects around 0.3% to 0.7% of people, or 24 million people worldwide, at some point in their lives. More men are affected than women: the number of males with the disorder is 1.4 times greater than that of females. Schizophrenia usually appears earlier in men. For males the symptoms usually start from 20 to 28 years of age, and in females it is 26 to 32 years of age. Symptoms that start in childhood, middle or old age are much rarer. Despite the received wisdom that schizophrenia occurs at similar rates worldwide, its rate of likelihood varies across the world, within countries, and at the local level. The disorder causes approximately 1% of worldwide disability adjusted life years (in other words, years spent with a disability). The rate of schizophrenia varies depending on how it is defined.
Accounts of a schizophrenia-like syndrome are rare before the 19th century. Detailed case reports from 1797 and 1809, are regarded as the earliest cases of the disorder. Schizophrenia was first described as a distinct syndrome affecting teenagers and young adults by Bénédict Morel in 1853, termed "démence précoce" (literally 'early dementia'). The term dementia praecox was used in 1891 by Arnold Pick in a case report of a psychotic disorder. In 1893 Emil Kraepelin introduced a new distinction in the classification of mental disorders between "dementia praecox" and mood disorder (termed manic depression and including both unipolar and bipolar depression). Kraepelin believed that "dementia praecox" was primarily a disease of the brain, and a form of dementia, different from other forms of dementia such as Alzheimer's disease which usually happen later in life.
Eugen Bleuler coined the term ”schizophrenia”, which translates roughly as "split mind", in 1908. The word was intended to describe the separation of functioning between personality, thinking, memory, and perception. Bleuler realized that the illness was not a dementia because some of his patients improved rather than got worse.
In the early 1970s, the criteria for determining schizophrenia were the subject of numerous controversies. Schizophrenia was diagnosed far more often in the United States than in Europe. This difference was partly the result of looser criteria for determining whether someone had the condition in the United States, where the DSM-II manual was used. In Europe, the ICD-9 manual was used. A 1972 study, published in the journal Science, concluded that the diagnosis of schizophrenia in the United States was often unreliable. These factors resulted in the publication of the DSM-III in 1980 with a stricter and more defined criteria for the diagnosis.
Negative social judgment has been identified as a major obstacle in the recovery of people who have schizophrenia.
In 2002, the term for schizophrenia in Japan was changed from “Seishin-Bunretsu-Byō”　精神分裂病 (“mind-split-disease”) to “Tōgō-shitchō-shō”　統合失調症 (“integration disorder”), in an attempt to reduce feelings of shame or embarrassment. The idea that the disease is caused by multiple factors (not just one mental cause) inspired the new name. The change increased the percentage of people who were informed of the diagnosis from 37 percent to 70 percent over three years.
In the United States in 2002, the cost of schizophrenia, including direct costs (people who were not hospitalized, people who were hospitalized, medicines, and long-term care) and non-healthcare costs (law enforcement, reduced workplace productivity, and unemployment), was estimated to be $62.7 billion.
The book “A Beautiful Mind” and the film of the same name are about the life of John Forbes Nash, an American mathematician and Nobel Prize winner who has schizophrenia. The movie “The Soloist” is based on the life of Nathaniel Ayers, a gifted musician who dropped out of the Julliard School, in New York City after the symptoms of schizophrenia began. He later became homeless in Los Angeles, California, in the notorious Skid Row section.
A drink or beverage is a liquid that an organism can take into their body, by using their mouth. Typical drinks for humans include water, tea, milk, coffee, juice, soft drinks and alcoholic drinks.
All drinks are mainly water. All life needs water to live. If a living organism don't get enough water, they will dehydrate, and likely die. Plants take in water through their roots, which are underground. Most land animals get water by drinking.
A need is a thing that, when a living being, plant or animal does not have it, it is not able to live.
A thing that someone wants to have, but is able to live when they do not have it, is called a want.
Every person has the same basic needs for the body.
Humans have bodily needs of water, food, clothing, and shelter to live.
The need for water is the most important because a person will die very quickly when they do not have drinking water. In a warm place food is the next most important need.
In a cold place, the need for clothes or shelter may be next most important because a person will soon die when they do not have these.
Other human needs are not so certain. They are mostly needs for the mind. It is often said that a person needs love, family, and friends. These needs are for personal relationships. They may also be wants. It is true that a life may be better with these things, but some friends can be bad, or bad sometimes. Good relationships can make life very happy. Thinking about a need that is not possible can make a person very unhappy.
Some of the study of philosophy is about questions like "What are the needs of a human?"
Some scientists study the needs of human or animal minds and bodies. The study of the mind is called psychology - "words about the mind". The study of bodily needs is part of medicine.
Yahoo! is a web portal and an internet content and service provider. It is known for its many products and services, such as their search engine, e-mail, instant messaging, and video, but also contents their products in news, weather forecasting, money and other information. Yahoo! makes money from advertisements in their services. A Yahoo account can also be created by a Google account. Yahoo is launched on October 8, 1997.
In January 1994, Jerry Yang and David Filo were Electrical Engineering graduate students at Stanford University. In April 1994, "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web" was renamed "Yahoo!", for which the official is "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle". Filo and Yang said they selected the name because they liked the word's general meaning, which comes from Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift: "rude, and ". Its URL was akebono.stanford.edu/yahoo. Yang describes their selection of the name as "We thought it fit well with what we were doing. It was irreverent. It was reflective of the Wild West nature of the Internet. A lot of people found it easy to remember, and besides, it's exactly what me and Jerry are. A couple of yahoos."
Mecca or Makkah (called Mecca in older texts, officially: Makkah al-Mukarramah; ) is a city in Saudi Arabia. As of the 2004 census, 1,294,169 people lived there. The city is inland from Jeddah, in the narrow sandy Valley of Abraham. It is above sea level. It is from the Red Sea.
Mecca is the holiest city in the Islamic world. Every year, millions of Muslims take a pilgrimage to Mecca, called the Hajj. They follow in the footsteps of Muhammad. All Muslims who are able to perform the Hajj are expected to do so at least once in their life. The Kaaba and Masjid al-Haram, are the holiest mosques in Islam. Mecca is closed to non-Muslims except for some journalists reporting on the Hajj.
The Kaaba, the small cubical building which Muslims pray towards is believed to have been built by Ibrahim and has been a religious center ever since. Muslims believed that God commanded Ibrahim to send his second wife Hajar and her son Ismail there. They found the Zamzam Well which led to people settling nearby, and thus Makkah was born. When Ismail was big enough, he helped his father to build the Kaaba. The Kaaba is the place towards which Muslims turn in prayer. This is known as the Qibla .
Arabian Peninsula
The Arabian Peninsula or Arabia is a peninsula in Southwest Asia at the junction of Africa and Asia. It lies east of Ethiopia and northern Somalia; south of Israel, the disputed Palestinian territories, and Jordan; and southwest of Iran.
The waters around Arabia are: on the southwest the Red Sea and Gulf of Aqaba; on the southeast the Arabian Sea; and on the northeast the Gulf of Oman and the Persian Gulf.
Arabia includes the countries of:
The peninsula is part of the Middle East, but that usually means the Arabian Peninsula with the Levant and Mesopotamia. The word "Arabia" often refers only to Saudi Arabia.
The country of Saudi Arabia covers almost all of Arabia. The majority of the population of the peninsula live in Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Northern Arabia has important oil wells. Climate change and the scarcity of water has affected the whole of this area. Water has become scarcer because human numbers have grown greatly. Most rivers are tapped in their upper reaches, which reduces water in the lower reaches of the rivers.
The Arabian Plate is a minor tectonic plate in the northern and eastern hemispheres. The most prominent feature of the peninsula is the desert. In the southwest there are mountain ranges. These get more rain than the rest of the peninsula.
South is one of the 4 cardinal directions on a compass. South is normally down on the bottom of most maps. For example: Ghana is to the south of Nigeria, which is itself to the south of Morocco . The South Pole is the farthest south you can go.
Central America () is the central geographic region of the Americas and specifically part of the continent known as North America. It goes from Guatemala and Belize in the north-west, to Panama in the south-east. It is the area of land that sits south-east of Mexico and north-west of Colombia. It is between the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea.
Central America has an area of . It is almost 0.1% of the Earth's surface. This is a list of the countries in Central America, from the largest to the smallest:
While Nicaragua is the largest country in area, of Central America, Guatemala has the largest population by country in Central America, with more than 14 million people and they also have the most populated city in Central America, being Guatemala City.
Six of the seven countries have Spanish as their official language, with Belize being the non-Spanish speaking country, as their official language is English, although there are now at least 195,597 (62.8%) of people in Belize who speak Spanish.
Some people also speak indigenous or creole languages like the Maya languages.
Central America has a density of 77 people per square kilometer.
Central America has an area of . It is almost 0.1% of the Earth's total surface. In 2009 the population was estimated at 41,739,000. It has a density of 77 people per square kilometer or 206 people per square mile.
Central America has many unique features that go from the north-western borders of Belize and Guatemala to the Isthmus of Panama. There it connects to the Colombian Pacific Lowlands in South America.
Central America is an area of some 524,000 square kilometres. The Pacific Ocean is on the southwest, the Caribbean Sea to the northeast, and the Gulf of Mexico to the north. Most of Central America rests on the Caribbean Plate.
The region is geologically active. It has volcanic eruptions and earthquakes from time to time.
The 1976 Guatemala earthquake killed 23,001 people. Managua, the capital of Nicaragua, was devastated by earthquakes in 1931 and 1972. The last one killed about 5,001 people. Three earthquakes hit El Salvador. The first one in 1986 and two in 2001. An earthquake devastated northern and central Costa Rica in 2009. It killed at least 35 people. In Honduras a powerful earthquake happened in 2009.
Volcanic eruptions are common. In 1968 the Arenal Volcano in Costa Rica erupted. This killed at least 87 people. The 3 villages of Tabacon, Pueblo Nuevo, and San Luis were buried under ash.
Central America has many mountain ranges; the longest are the Sierra Madre de Chiapas, the Cordillera Isabelia and the Cordillera de Talamanca. Most of the population of Honduras, Costa Rica and Guatemala live in valleys, between mountains. Valleys are also suitable for the production of coffee, beans and other crops.
Central America is part of the Mesoamerican Biodiversity hotspot, boasting 7% of the world's biodiversity. As a bridge between North and South America, Central America has many species from the Nearctic and the Neotropic ecozones. However the southern countries (Costa Rica and Panama) of the region have more biodiversity than the northern countries (Guatemala and Belize), meanwhile the central countries (Honduras, Nicaragua and El Salvador) have least biodiversity. The table shows current statistics for the seven countries:
French (French: "", pronounced "Fronce-eh") is a Romance language that was first spoken in France. It is also spoken in Belgium (Wallonia), Luxembourg, Quebec (Canada), Switzerland (Romandy) and many different countries in Africa (Francophone Africa). About 220 million people speak French as a native or a second language. It has also been one of the roots of other languages such as the Haitian Creole language. Like the other Romance languages, its nouns have genders that are divided into masculine ("masculin") and feminine ("féminin") words.
In ancient times, the Celts lived in what is now France. In those days, the land was called Gaul (Latin: Gallia). The Romans conquered Gallia and divided it into provinces. Because the Romans spoke Latin, the local people learned Latin and began to speak it. Their own language, Gaulish, tended to be spoken less often, although Breton is a language still spoken today in the part of France called Brittany, that came from the old Celtic language.
French pronunciation, more so than other Romance languages, became radically different from Latin. After the Roman Empire fell and Germanic peoples swarmed the countryside, Vulgar Latin was changing quickly. In medieval France it changed into two dialects or languages: "langue d'oc" and "langue d'oïl". They both mean "language of yes", because "oc" was the word for "yes" in the south, and "oïl" meant "yes" in the north. Today, the word for yes in French is "oui", pronounced like "we".
In 1635, France established the French Academy in order to standardize the French language. To this day, the academy establishes the rules for Standard French.
"Langue d'oc" is now called Occitan, and it is still spoken by many people in Southern France.
French uses the Roman alphabet, just like English. There are a few differences because vowels can have three types of diacritics added on to them. They are the acute accent é; grave accent è and circumflex accent î. A cedilla can also be added onto a c to make ç.
If a word ends with a consonant, this will usually not be pronounced unless the next word starts with a vowel. However, if the word is very short or the last consonant is a c, r, l or f, this is still pronounced.
Here are some examples of French words and sentences :
Many French words are like English words, because English took many words from the Norman language, a dialect of French influenced by Old Norse. This is true even though scholars consider English to be a Germanic language, like German. For example, many English words ending with "tion", "sion", "ible", or "able" came from the French language.
French and English have many cognates, which are words that look and sound similar because they come from the same . Here are some examples:
Prime minister
A prime minister manages the politics of a country and is the head of government. With countries that have kings and queens (known as monarchs), they are very important because they are in charge of most of the politics (they are "head of the government"). In countries with a president, they might be in charge of most of the politics (as in the Republic of Ireland), or they may be in day-to day charge, but taking orders from the president as in France. The opposite of a prime minister is a composite minister.
Countries with a Prime Minister:
Greenland is the world's largest island.
Greenland is an autonomous territory of the kingdom of Denmark. This large Arctic island is near Iceland to the east and Canada to the west. It has a population of only 50,000 people, limited by its cold climate. Most of the civilian population lives in the southern part of the island, on the coasts. The capital of Greenland is Nuuk.
The island is democratic, with its own elections and a representative seat of government in Nuuk. It is part of the Kingdom of Denmark, a constitutional monarchy with Queen Margrethe II as head of state.
The island's Thule Air Base is under Danish control, but is administered by the United States Air Force.
The island is the least densely populated country in the world, with a density of 0.026 people per square kilometer. Antarctica is not counted because it is not an independent country and has no permanent inhabitants.
The ice sheet that covers Greenland may hide three separate islands, which have been joined by glaciers since the last geologic ice age.
In Greenland, there are no forests. In the south, at the coastal area, only some dwarf trees are found.
Greenland has been inhabited at intervals over at least the last 4,500 years by Arctic peoples. They came from what is now Canada. Norsemen settled the uninhabited southern part of Greenland beginning in the 10th century, having previously settled Iceland.
Norsemen would later set sail from Greenland and Iceland with Leif Erikson. They were the first known Europeans to reach North America. They did so nearly 500 years before Columbus reached the Caribbean islands. Inuit peoples arrived in Greenland in the 13th century. Though under continuous influence of Norway and Norwegians, Greenland was not formally under the Norwegian crown until 1261. Their colonies declined after the Black Death in the late 1400s. Denmark–Norway, joined in alliance at the time, reclaimed sovereignty over the island in the 17th century. Greenland became Danish in 1814.
The island is populated mostly by Inuit and Scandinavians who speak Greenlandic, an Eskimo-Aleut language. Danish is also spoken by most people. The national anthem of Greenland is Nunarput utoqqarsuanngoravit. Greenlandic became the sole official language in June 2009. However, it is the dialect of western Greenland, leaving other dialects to become less used and endangered. Danish is used in practice by professional people and by many of the Inuit population. English is taught in schools from the first year onwards.
Until 2009, there were 20 communes in Greenland. Unless stated otherwise, they are in the district Kitaa:
This changed on January 1st, 2009, when these were merged into four large communes:
In addition, some parts of Greenland are outside a commune, namely:
As of January 1st, 2008, 218 people lived there.
The island has many mountains. All of the cities are on the coast, because everywhere else is covered by a big layer of ice. The major cities are Nuuk, Sisimiut, Ilulissat, and Qaqortoq.
The Soviet Union (short for the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics or USSR) was a single-party Marxist–Leninist state. It existed for 69 years, from 1922 until 1991. It was the first country to declare itself socialist and build towards a communist society. It was a union of 14 Soviet socialist republics and one Soviet federative socialist republic (Russia).
The Soviet Union was created about five years after the Russian Revolution. It was announced after Vladimir Lenin overthrew Alexander Kerensky as Russian leader. The communist government developed industry and over time became a major, powerful union. The largest country in the Union was Russia, and Kazakhstan was the second. The capital city of the Soviet Union was Moscow. The Soviet Union expanded its political control greatly after World War II. It took over the whole of Eastern Europe. Those countries were not made part of the Soviet Union, but they were controlled by the Soviet Union indirectly. These countries, like Poland, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany, were called satellite states.
The top-level committee which made the laws was the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union. In practice, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the leader and most important decision-maker in their system of government.
Although the constitution said the Republics could leave the Union if they wanted, it was a completely centralized government, with no states' rights for the member countries.
The Union was formed with the idea to give everyone equal social and economic rights (equality). There was virtually no private property—everything belonged to the state (public property was an idea discussed by Karl Marx, and formed the basis for socialism) 'Soviets', or workers' councils, were created by the working class to lead the socialist state democratically, but they soon lost power with the rise of Stalinism. The Union was successful in many fields, putting the first man and satellite into space and winning World War II alongside the United States and United Kingdom. However, its centralized government found innovation and change difficult to handle. The Union collapsed in 1991, partly due to the efforts at reform by its leader, Mikhail Gorbachev.
The Soviet Union was made of 15 republics. These were either "Soviet Socialist Republics", or "Soviet Socialist Federal Republics". Each republic was independent and handled its own cultural affairs. Each also had the right to leave the union, which they did in 1991.
The "Federal Republics" were different in that they had more autonomy, and were made up of states themselves. These were often called "Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics". There were a number of them. Most of them still exist; though they are now republics, within the independent state. The "Tatar ASSR" turned into the "Republic of Tatarstan", for example (It is located around Kazan).
The Soviet Union at its largest size in 1991, with , was the world's biggest country. Covering a sixth of the world's lived in land, its size was comparable to North America's. The western part (in Europe) accounted for a quarter of the country's area, and was the country's cultural and economic center. The eastern part (in Asia) extended to the Pacific Ocean to the east and Afghanistan to the south, and was much less lived in than the western part. It was over across (11 time zones) and almost north to south. Its five climatic (different weather, temperature, humidity and atmospheric pressure) zones were tundra, taiga, steppes, desert, and mountains.
The Soviet Union had the world's longest border, measuring over in 1991. Two thirds of the Soviet border was coastline of the Arctic Ocean. Across the Bering Strait was the United States. The Soviet Union bordered Afghanistan, China, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Hungary, Iran, Mongolia, North Korea, Norway, Poland, Romania, and Turkey at the end of WWII.
The Soviet Union's longest river was the Irtysh. The Soviet Union's highest mountain was Communism Peak (today it is called the Ismail Samani Peak) in Tajikistan measured at . The world's largest lake, the Caspian Sea, was mostly in the Soviet Union. The world's deepest lake, Lake Baikal, was in the Soviet Union.
The last Russian Tsar (emperor), Nicholas II, ruled Russia until March 1917, when the Russian Empire was taken over and a short-lived "provisional government" replaced it, led by Alexander Kerensky and soon to be overthrown in November by Bolsheviks.
From 1917 to 1922, the country that came before the Soviet Union was the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), which was its own country, as were other Soviet republics at the time. The Soviet Union was officially created in December 1922 as the union of the Russian (also known as Bolshevist Russia), Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Transcaucasian Soviet republics ruled by the communist Bolshevik parties.
Extreme government-changing activity in the Russian Empire began with the Decembrist Revolt of 1825, and although serfdom was removed in 1861, its removal was achieved on terms unfavorable to the peasants (poor agricultural workers) and served to encourage changers (revolutionaries). A parliament (legislative assembly)—the State Duma—was created in 1906 after the Russian Revolution of 1905, but the Tsar protested people trying to move from absolute to constitutional monarchy. Rebellion continued and was aggravated during World War I by failure and food shortages in popular cities.
A rebellion in Saint Petersburg, in response to the wartime decay of Russia's economy and morale, caused the "February Revolution" and the removal of the government in March 1917. The tsarist autocracy was replaced by the Russian "Provisional government", whose leaders intended to have elections to Russian Constituent Assembly and to continue war on the side of the Entente in World War I.
At the same time, workers' councils, known as Soviets, sprang up across the country. The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, pushed for socialist revolution in the Soviets and on the streets. In November 1917, during the "October Revolution", they took power from the Provisional Government. In December, the Bolsheviks signed an armistice (peace) with the Central Powers. In March, after more fighting, the Soviets quit the war for good and signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
In the long and bloody Russian Civil War, the new Soviet power won. The civil war between the Reds and the Whites started in 1917 and ended in 1923. It included the Siberian Intervention and other foreign interference, the killing of Nicholas II and his family and the famine in 1921, which killed about 5 million. In March 1921, during a related conflict with Poland, the Peace of Riga was signed and split disputed territories in Belarus and Ukraine between the Republic of Poland and Soviet Russia. The Soviet Union had to resolve similar conflicts with the newly established Republic of Finland, the Republic of Estonia, the Republic of Latvia, and the Republic of Lithuania, which had all escaped the empire during the civil war.
On 28 December 1922, people from the Russian SFSR, the Transcaucasian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, and the Byelorussian SSR approved the Treaty of Creation of the USSR and the Declaration of the Creation of the USSR, creating the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. These two documents were made true by the 1st Congress of Soviets of the USSR and signed by heads of delegations.
On 1 February 1924, the USSR was accepted as a country by the British Empire. Also in 1924, a Soviet Constitution (set of laws) was approved, making true the December 1922 union of the Russian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR, the Belarusian SSR, and the Transcaucasian SFSR to form the "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" (USSR).
The big changes of the economy, industry, and politics of the country began in the early days of Soviet power in 1917. A large part of this was performed according to Bolshevik Initial Decrees, documents of the Soviet government, signed by Vladimir Lenin. One of the most important and notable breakthroughs was the GOELRO plan, that planned a major change of the Soviet economy based on total electrification of the country. The Plan was developed in 1920 and covered a 10- to 15-year period. It included the making of a network of 30 regional power stations, including ten large hydroelectric power plants, and numerous electric-powered large industrial organizations. The Plan became the prototype for subsequent Five-Year Plans and was basically fulfilled by 1931.
From its beginning years, government in the Soviet Union was ruled as a one-party state by the Communist Party (Bolsheviks). After the economic policy of War Communism during the Civil War, the Soviet government permitted some private enterprise to coexist with nationalized industry in the 1920s and total food requisition in the countryside was replaced by a food tax ("see" New Economic Policy).
Soviet leaders argued that one-party rule was necessary because it ensured that 'capitalist exploitation' would not return to the Soviet Union and that the principles of Democratic Centralism would represent the people's will. Debate over the future of the economy provided the background for Soviet leaders to take more power in the years after Lenin's death in 1924. Initially, Lenin was to be replaced by a "troika" composed of Grigory Zinoviev of Ukraine, Lev Kamenev of Moscow, and Joseph Stalin of Georgia.
Stalin led the country through World War II and into the Cold War. Gulag camps greatly expanded to take millions of prisoners. After he died, Georgy Malenkov continued his policies. Nikita Khrushchev reversed some of Stalin's policies,but Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin kept things as they were.
After the 1936 revised constitution, the Soviet Union stopped acting as a union of republics and more as a single super-country.
Stalin died on 5 March 1953. Nikita Khrushchev eventually won the following power struggle by the mid-1950s. In 1956, he denounced Stalin's repression and eased controls over party and society. This was known as de-Stalinization.
Moscow considered Eastern Europe to be a very vital buffer zone for the forward defense of its western borders. For this reason, the USSR sought to strengthen its control of the region. It did this by transforming the Eastern European countries into satellite states, dependent upon and obedient to its leadership. Soviet military force was used to suppress anti-Stalinist uprisings in Hungary and Poland in 1956.
In the late 1950s, a confrontation with China regarding the USSR's policies led to the Sino–Soviet split. This resulted in a break throughout the global Marxist–Leninist movement. The governments in Albania, Cambodia and Somalia chose to ally with China instead of the USSR.
During this period of the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Soviet Union continued to make progress in the Space Race. It rivalled the United States. The USSR launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1 in 1957; a living dog named Laika in 1957; the first human being, Yuri Gagarin in 1961; the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova in 1963; Alexei Leonov, the first person to walk in space in 1965; the first soft landing on the Moon by spacecraft Luna 9 in 1966; and the first Moon rovers, Lunokhod 1 and Lunokhod 2.
Leonid Brezhnev led the Soviet Union from 1964 until his death in 1982. He came to power after he convinced the government to overthrow the then-leader Nikita Krushchev. Brezhnev's rule is often linked with the decline in Soviet economy and starting the chain of events that would lead to the union's eventual collapse. He had many self-awarded medals. He was awarded Hero of the Soviet Union (the highest honor) on three separate occasions. Brezhnev was succeeded by Yuri Andropov, who died a few years later. Andropov was succeeded by the frail and aging Konstantin Chernenko. Chernenko died a mere year after taking office.
In 1980 the Soviet Union hosted the Summer Olympics with Brezhnev opening and closing the games. The games were heavily boycotted by the western nations, particularly the United States. During the closing ceremony, the flag of the City of Los Angeles was raised instead of the flag of the United States (to symbolise the next host city/nation) and the anthem of the Olympics was played instead of the anthem of the United States in response to the boycott.
Brezhnev was the second longest serving Soviet leader after Stalin. The following is a list of leaders (General Secretary of the Communist Party) in order of their tenure and length of leadership:
Khrushchev and Gorbachev are the only Soviet leaders to have not died whilst in office. Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev are the only leaders who were not (de jure) head of state during their leaderships.
Mikhail Gorbachev was the Soviet Union's last leader. He was the only Soviet leader to have been born after the October revolution and was thus a product of the Soviet Union having grown up in it. He and US president Ronald Reagan signed a treaty to get rid of some nuclear weapons. Gorbachev started social and economic reforms that gave people freedom of speech; which allowed them to criticize the government and its policies. The ruling communist party lost its grip on the media and the people. Newspapers began printing the many failures that the Soviet Union had covered up and denied in its past. The Soviet Union's economy was lagging and the government was spending a lot of money on competing with the west.
By the 1980s the Soviet economy was suffering but it was stable. Gorbachev's new ideas had gotten out of hand and the communist party lost control. Boris Yeltsin was elected (democratically) the President of the Russian SFSR even though Gorbachev did not want him to come into power. Lithuania announced its independence from the Union and the Soviet government demanded it surrender its independence or it would send the Red Army to keep order. Gorbachev invented the idea of keeping the Soviet Union together with each republic being more independent but under the same leader. He wanted to call it the 'Union of Soviet Sovereign Republics' to keep the Russian initials as CCCP (USSR in English).
A group of communist leaders, unhappy with Gorbachev's idea, tried to take over Moscow and stop the Soviet Union from collapsing. It only made people want independence more. Although he survived the attempted takeover, he lost all of his power outside of Moscow. Russia declared independence in December 1991. Later in the month, leaders of Russia, Byelorussia, and Ukraine signed a treaty called the Belavezha Agreement to dissolve the USSR, extremely angering Gorbachev. He had no choice but to accept the treaty and resigned on Christmas Day 1991. The Soviet Union's parliament (Supreme Soviet) made the Belavezha Agreement law, marking formally the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The next day, the Soviet flag was lowered from the Kremlin for the last time.
Since 2013, the document that confirmed the dissolution of the Soviet Union has been missing.
A monarch is the ruler of a monarchy. Monarchs usually get their power by inheritance – from one of their parents. When a ruler dies their child, or nearest relative, takes over. A male monarch is usually called a king or emperor. A female monarch is usually called a queen or empress.
Monarchs were very common in history until the 19th century. Most European countries had monarchs in past centuries, but no longer have them. Some countries that still have monarchs have other leaders that actually have the power. Some countries elect their monarch instead of using inheritance, like the Holy Roman Empire and Malaysia.
Monarchs can also have monarchs of lower honour below them, e.g. an Empire could include several kingdoms, and a kingdom had several duchies or principalities, nations would rarely include all titles, usually going from duchy to kingdom instead of duchy to principality to kingdom. Prince/Princess means 'Ruler of a Principality' and 'son of king/queen'. Some other languages have separate words for them.
Unit means part of something. It could mean a unit of measurement, or a unit in an army.
Units sometimes means the digit in a number on the right, which is also called the "ones".
Some other ideas come from this word:
For example, a football team may be called "X United". This means that the town of X has come together to support the group.
In the BBC TV series Doctor Who, UNIT (UNified Intelligence Taskforce) is a military group on earth who battle invading aliens.
An uncle is a name used in an extended family. An uncle is either a brother of one of someone's parents. That person is the uncle's nephew (male) or niece (female). An uncle's child is a cousin. A (also written as great-uncle or grand-uncle) is the brother of a grandparent. In some cultures an uncle is considered a close family member. Based on the old Chinese saying "the oldest son in the family is the father of the family" an uncle is often the head of a family. In many cultures no single word (such as uncle) describes both their parents' brothers. Instead there are words to describe a person's kinship to their mother's brother or a person's kinship to their father's brother. An uncle can also be someone not related by blood or marriage as in a term of endearment or respect. In this use uncle can also be part of a nickname such as Uncle Sam.
During the Middle Ages in western Europe, a maternal uncle played a particular role in the family. A young man was often closer to his maternal uncle (from or "little grandfather") than to his own father. Tacitus noted the Franks had very strong ties between a maternal uncle and his nephew. In Roman family relationships the "avunculus" had a responsibility to defend his nephews as well as his nieces. The maternal uncle relationship was an extension of the Roman kin system's strong brother-sister relationship.
A maternal or paternal relative is one who is related through their mother or father, respectively. For example a maternal uncle is a the subject's mother's brother.An in-law is a relationship that is not by blood, but instead by marriage. The in-law shares the in-law relationships of the spouses relatives. For example a uncle in-law could be the husband of the subject's Aunt.
The word "information" is used in many different ways. Originally, it comes from a word that meant to give a form to something. Information is something that people can learn, know about, or understand. For example, a newspaper contains information about the world. This article contains information about "Information".
People who use computers often use the words "information" and "data" in the same way. There are special fields of study called "information science", "information technology" (IT), and data science.
In the 1970s and 1980s, some people gave a new, specific meaning to "information". At that time, the first computer databases were built. In computer science, "data" often means a kind of information that has not been checked. That means "data" has not been changed or fixed, and you may not be able to trust it. With the new meaning, "information" means data that has been checked and passed tests for what it must be. A person can trust that "information" is correct.
Information can only be correct and good enough to trust if there are very good and complete ways to check the data (data checking, validation or verification) and decide it is good enough (acceptance process). A person must know rules were used to check the data or trust the person who checked the data. If a person cannot tell that this was done, the information still seems to be data for that person, so that person must check the data again, in that general view about data.
The Information Age is a historic period.
An international airport is a large airport that airplanes can use to fly to and from other countries. A domestic airport is an airport which is usually smaller and only has airplanes coming from different places in the same country. Most international airports have shops and restaurants for airplane passengers to use.
An airport used by the military is often called an air force base or airbase. An aircraft carrier is a floating airbase.
Airports are made and operated for safety. Today, people must walk through a metal detector, a machine that can tell if metal goes through it. If it makes a noise, the officers will make that person take off all things on them that are metal. They also have X-ray machines that can look into luggage. If officers find items such as weapons, or anything that can be used to kill people, that item (and the person who has it) are taken away and possibly arrested. As well as this, passengers are not allowed to bring bottles or containers with over 100 ml of liquid onto the plane because they could be turned into bombs. Therefore, all water bottles must be emptied before entering the secured area.
Ice is the common name for frozen water. Other liquids, such as ammonia or methane or milk could be called ice when they freeze but they are called 'milk ice', for instance, instead of just 'ice'. Liquid water becomes solid ice when it is very cold. The freezing point is 0° Celsius (32° Fahrenheit or 273 kelvin).
Ice is commonly made in a home refrigerator or freezer. If water is put in a freezer and left for a while, the water gets very cold and will freeze solid, creating ice. Water can be placed into a copper (or other metal) container to cause it freeze into ice faster. Metals are good conductors of heat, so water can freeze faster than in a plastic ice tray.
Unlike other liquids, water expands as it freezes to become ice; so ice floats on water because ice has less density than water. This is very unusual - just about every other liquid gets more dense as it cools; water ice, however, is an important exception. Liquid water expands by about 9% as it becomes ice - it takes up more space. This is because the water molecules are actually farther apart instead of being closer together. The molecules in an ice crystal are arranged in a way that makes it less dense than liquid water.
If water in plumbing freezes, it can burst the water pipe. Water in glass bottles can make them explode when it freezes. Water freezing in rock cracks can expand enough to split hard rocks apart; this is an important geological weathering process that can wear down mountains and make rock into soil.
When materials are cooled their molecules vibrate less and compact together. When most materials reach a temperature called the freezing point, the molecules form a crystalline solid - although some materials (like glass and tar) do not crystallise at all but form super stiff fluids, which seem to be solid. Only Helium will not freeze; all other substances will freeze if cold enough, but fluids like cooking oil, antifreeze, petrol (gasoline), nitrogen, etc. freeze at temperatures that most people don't experience.
Salt water needs a lower temperature to freeze than pure water. The resulting ice contains much less salt than the salt water it came from. This fact has sometimes been used for desalination. Salty ice is not as strong as frozen pure water. Similarly spreading salt on ice melts it, if it's not too cold: the salt progressively eats into the ice, forming brine which does not freeze at that temperature.
Because ice floats, even large bodies of water that freeze, like some oceans, only form ice on the surface. Most lakes never freeze to the bottom. Even the coldest oceans, like the Arctic Ocean, only freeze on the top, leaving liquid ocean circulating below. Because of this the Earth's oceans are able to redistribute heat and the climate of the earth has less extremes of heat and cold than it would otherwise. If ice were to sink instead of float, the oceans would fill with ice from the bottom, would remain solid and only some of the top would thaw. A solid ocean would not circulate heat. But because ice floats on the surface the water beneath can continue to circulate and the ice on the surface stays exposed and readily melts when the temperature rises.
Big bodies of ice on land are called glaciers. Antarctica has the majority of the world's ice.
Climate change happens all the time. When it is very cold it is called an ice age. During ice ages very large areas of the earth are covered in ice, snow and glaciers. The causes of ice ages are complex, and not entirely known. Global warming is currently affecting the Earth's ice resources and its causes are also very complex.
There is also 'dry ice'; it is frozen carbon dioxide. Dry ice exposed to normal air gives off carbon dioxide gas that is odorless and colorless. The gas is so cold that when it mixes with air it cools the water vapour in the air to fog, which looks like a thick white smoke. It is often used in the theatre to make fake fog or smoke.
Travel is the activity of going from one place to another place. When a person makes the same trip every day to work or school, this type of travelling is usually called "commuting." Some people travel to other cities as part of their job. This is called "business travel." When many people travel to a distant place to stay, it is called "human migration".
Some people travel on their vacation, to visit other towns, cities, or countries. This is tourism. These people stay overnight in hotels, hostels, motels, apartments or bed and breakfast. Some prefer camping. Through the centuries, modes of travel have changed. Some people (travel writers) write about travelling in books including autobiographies or journals.
Types of travelling:
The Cable News Network (CNN) is a American cable news television channel. It was founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. The Cable News Network first aired on television on June 1, 1980. The Cable News Network's first newscast was anchored (hosted) by David Walker and his wife Lois Hart. In its first year CNN hired many political analysts, including Rowland Evans and Robert Novak. On January 1, 1982 CNN launched a 24-hour sister newscast channel with no talk shows or commentary shows called CNN2. CNN broadcasts programs from its headquarters at the CNN Center in Atlanta, or from the Time Warner Center in New York City, or from studios in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. CNN is owned by Time Warner, and the U.S. news channel is a part of the Turner Broadcasting System.