AcharyaChanakya/simple-wikipedia huggingface dataset:
Saturn is an oblate spheroid, meaning that it is flattened at the poles, and it swells out around its equator. The planet's equatorial diameter is , while its polar diameter (the distance from the north pole to the south pole) is ; a 9% difference. Saturn has a flattened shape due to its very fast rotation, once every 10.8 hours.
Saturn is the only planet in the Solar System that is less dense than water. Even though the planet's core is very dense, it has a gaseous atmosphere, so the average specific density of the planet is 0.69 g/cm. This means if Saturn could be placed in a large pool of water, it would float.
The outer part of Saturn's atmosphere is made up of about 96% hydrogen, 3% helium, 0.4% methane and 0.01% ammonia. There are also very small amounts of acetylene, ethane and phosphine.
Saturn's clouds show a banded pattern, like the cloud bands seen on Jupiter. Saturn's clouds are much fainter and the bands are wider at the equator. Saturn's lowest cloud layer is made up of water ice, and is about thick. The temperature here is quite low, at 250 K (-10°F, -23°C). However scientists do not agree about this. The layer above, about thick, is made up of ammonium hydrosulfide ice, and above that is a layer of ammonia ice clouds thick. The highest layer is made up of hydrogen and helium gases, which extends between and above the water cloud tops. Auroras are also known to form in Saturn in the mesosphere. The temperature at Saturn's cloud tops is extremely low, at 98 K (-283 °F, -175 °C). The temperatures in the inner layers are much higher than the outside layers because of the heat produced by Saturn's interior.
Saturn's winds are some of the fastest in the Solar System, reaching 1,800 km/h (1,118 mph), ten times faster than winds on Earth.
Saturn's atmosphere is also known to form oval shaped clouds, similar to the clearer spots seen in Jupiter. These oval spots are cyclonic storms, the same as cyclones seen on Earth. In 1990, the Hubble Space Telescope found a very large white cloud near Saturn's equator. Storms like the one in 1990 were known as "Great White Spots". These unique storms only exist for a short time and only happen about every 30 Earth years, at the time of the summer solstice in the Northern Hemisphere.
Great White Spots were also found in 1876, 1903, 1933, and 1960. If this cycle continues, another storm will form in about 2020.
The Voyager 1 spacecraft found a hexagonal cloud pattern near Saturn's north pole at about 78°N. The Cassini−Huygens probe later confirmed it in 2006. Unlike the north pole, the south pole does not show any hexagonal cloud feature. The probe also discovered a hurricane-like storm locked to the south pole that clearly showed an eyewall. Until this discovery, eyewalls had only been seen on Earth.
Saturn's interior is similar to Jupiter's interior. It has a small rocky core about the size of the Earth at its center. It is very hot; its temperature reaches 15,000 K (). Saturn is so hot that it gives out more heat energy into space than it receives from the Sun. Above it is a thicker layer of metallic hydrogen, about deep. Above that layer is a region of liquid hydrogen and helium. The core is heavy, with about 9 to 22 times more mass than the Earth's core.
Saturn has a natural magnetic field that is weaker than Jupiter's. Like the Earth's, Saturn's field is a magnetic dipole. Saturn's field is unique in that it is perfectly symmetrical, unlike any other known planet. This means the field is exactly in line with the planet's axis. Saturn generates radio waves, but they are too weak to be detected from Earth. The moon Titan orbits in the outer part of Saturn's magnetic field and gives out plasma to the field from the ionised particles in Titan's atmosphere.
Saturn's average distance from the Sun is over 1,400,000,000 km (869,000,000 mi), about nine times the distance from the Earth to the Sun. It takes 10,759 days, or about 29.8 years, for Saturn to orbit around the Sun. This is known as Saturn's "orbital period".
Voyager 1 measured Saturn's rotation as being 10 hours 14 minutes at the equator, 10 hours 40 minutes closer to the poles, and 10 hours 39 minutes 24 seconds for the planet's interior. This is known as its "rotational period".
Cassini measured the rotation of Saturn as being 10 hours 45 minutes 45 seconds ± 36 seconds. That is about six minutes, or one percent, longer than the radio rotational period measured by the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft, which flew by Saturn in 1980 and 1981.
Saturn's rotational period is calculated by the rotation speed of radio waves released by the planet. The Cassini−Huygens spacecraft discovered that the radio waves slowed down, suggesting that the rotational period increased. Since the scientists do not think Saturn's rotation is actually slowing down, the explanation may lie in the magnetic field that causes the radio waves.
Saturn is best known for its planetary rings which are easy to see with a telescope. There are seven named rings; A, B, C, D, E, F, and G rings. They were named in the order they were discovered, which is different to their order from the planet. From the planet the rings are: D, C, B, A, F, G and E.
Scientists believe that the rings are material left after a moon broke apart. A new idea says that it was a very large moon, most of which crashed into the planet. This left a large amount of ice to form the rings, and also some of the moons, like Enceladus, which are thought to be made of ice.
The rings were first discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610, using his telescope. They did not look like rings to Galileo, so he called them "handles". He thought that Saturn was three separate planets that almost touched one another. In 1612, when the rings were facing edge on with the Earth, the rings disappeared, then reappeared again in 1613, further confusing Galileo. In 1655, Christiaan Huygens was the first person to recognise Saturn was surrounded by rings. Using a much more powerful telescope than Galilei's, he noted Saturn "is surrounded by a thin, flat, ring, nowhere touching...". In 1675, Giovanni Domenico Cassini discovered that the planet's rings were in fact made of smaller ringlets with gaps. The largest ring gap was later named the Cassini Division. In 1859, James Clerk Maxwell showed that the rings cannot be solid, but are made of small particles, each orbiting Saturn on their own, otherwise, it would become unstable or break apart. James Keeler studied the rings using a spectroscope in 1895 which proved Maxwell's theory.
The rings range from to above the planet's equator. As proved by Maxwell, even though the rings appear to be solid and unbroken when viewed from above, the rings are made of small particles of rock and ice. They are only about thick; made of silica rock, iron oxide and ice particles. The smallest particles are only specks of dust while the largest are the size of a house. The C and D rings also seem to have a "wave" in them, like waves in water. These large waves are high, but only moving slowly at about each day. Some scientists believe that the wave is caused by Saturn's moons. Another idea is the waves were made by a comet hitting Saturn in 1983 or 1984.
The largest gaps in the rings are the Cassini Division and the Encke Division, both visible from the Earth. The Cassini Division is the largest, measuring wide. However, when the Voyager spacecrafts visited Saturn in 1980, they discovered that the rings are a complex structure, made out of thousands of thin gaps and ringlets. Scientists believe this is caused by the gravitational force of some of Saturn's moons. The tiny moon Pan orbits inside Saturn's rings, creating a gap within the rings. Other ringlets keep their structure due to the gravitational force of shepherd satellites, such as Prometheus and Pandora. Other gaps form due to the gravitational force of a large moon farther away. The moon Mimas is responsible for clearing away the Cassini gap.
Recent data from the Cassini spacecraft has shown that the rings have their own atmosphere, free from the planet's atmosphere. The rings' atmosphere is made of oxygen gas, and it is produced when the Sun's ultraviolet light breaks up the water ice in the rings. Chemical reaction also occurs between the ultraviolet light and the water molecules, creating hydrogen gas. The oxygen and hydrogen atmospheres around the rings are very widely spaced. As well as oxygen and hydrogen gas, the rings have a thin atmosphere made of hydroxide. This anion was discovered by the Hubble Space Telescope.
The Voyager space probe discovered features shaped like rays, called "spokes". These were also seen later by the Hubble telescope. The Cassini probe photographed the spokes in 2005. They are seen as dark when under sunlight, and appear light when against the unlit side. At first it was thought the spokes were made of microscopic dust particles but new evidence shows that they are made of ice.
They rotate at the same time with the planet's magnetosphere, therefore, it is believed that they have a connection with electromagnetism. However, what causes the spokes to form is still unknown. They appear to be seasonal, disappearing during solstice and appearing again during equinox.
Saturn has 53 named moons, and another nine which are still being studied. Many of the moons are very small: 33 are less than in diameter and 13 moons are less than . Seven moons are large enough to be a near perfect sphere caused by their own gravitation. These moons are Titan, Rhea, Iapetus, Dione, Tethys, Enceladus and Mimas. Titan is the largest moon, larger than the planet Mercury, and it is the only moon in the Solar System to have a thick, dense atmosphere. Hyperion and Phoebe are the next largest moons, larger than in diameter.
In December 2004 and January 2005 a man-made satellite called the Cassini−Huygens probe took lots of close photos of Titan. One part of this satellite, known as the Huygens probe, then landed on Titan. Named after the Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens, it was the first spacecraft to land in the outer Solar System. The probe was designed to float in case it landed in liquid.
Enceladus, the sixth largest moon, is about in diameter. It is one of the few outer solar system objects that shows volcanic activity. In 2011, scientists discovered an electric link between Saturn and Enceladus. This is caused by ionised particles from volcanos on the small moon interacting with Saturn's magnetic fields. Similar interactions cause the northern lights on Earth.
Saturn was first explored by the Pioneer 11 spacecraft in September 1979. It flew as close as above the planet's cloud tops. It took photographs of the planet and a few of its moons, but were low in resolution. It discovered a new, thin ring called the F ring. It also discovered that the dark ring gaps appear bright when viewed towards the Sun, which shows the gaps are not empty of material. The spacecraft measured the temperature of the moon Titan.
In November 1980, Voyager 1 visited Saturn, and took higher resolution photographs of the planet, rings and moons. These photos were able to show the surface features of the moons. Voyager 1 went close to Titan, and gained much information about its atmosphere. In August, 1981, Voyager 2 continued to study the planet. Photos taken by the space probe showed that changes were happening to the rings and atmosphere. The Voyager spacecrafts discovered a number of moons orbiting close to Saturn's rings, as well as discovering new ring gaps.
On July 1, 2004, the Cassini−Huygens probe entered into orbit around Saturn. Before then, it flew close to Phoebe, taking very high resolution photos of its surface and collecting data. On December 25, 2004, the Huygens probe separated from the Cassini probe before moving down towards Titan's surface and landed there on January 14, 2005. It landed on a dry surface, but it found that large bodies of liquid exist on the moon. The Cassini probe continued to collect data from Titan and a number of the icy moons. It found evidence that the moon Enceladus had water erupting from its geysers. Cassini also proved, in July 2006, that Titan had hydrocarbon lakes, located near its north pole. In March 2007, it discovered a large hydrocarbon lake the size of the Caspian Sea near its north pole.
Cassini observed lightning occurring in Saturn since early 2005. The power of the lightning was measured to be 1,000 times more powerful than lightning on Earth. Astronomers believe that the lightning observed in Saturn is the strongest ever seen.
Slavery is when a person is treated as the property of another person. This person is usually called a slave, with the owner being called a slavemaster. It often means that slaves are forced to work, or else they will be punished by the law (if slavery is legal in that place) or by their master.
There is evidence that even before there was writing, there was slavery. There have been different types of slavery, and they have been in almost all cultures and continents. Some societies had laws about slavery, or they had an economy that was built on it. Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome had many slaves.
During the 20th century almost all countries made laws forbidding slavery. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that slavery is wrong. Slavery is now banned by international law. Nevertheless, there are still different forms of slavery in some countries.
The English word "slave" comes from the medieval word for the Slavic peoples of Central Europe and Eastern Europe, because these were the last ethnic group to be captured and enslaved in Central Europe. According to Adam Smith and Auguste Comte, a slave was mainly defined as a captive or prisoner of war. Slave-holders used to buy slaves at slave auctions. In many cases slaves are not allowed rights.
Slavery has existed for a long time. Early hunter-gatherers had no use for slaves. They did everything for themselves. Having another pair of hands to help them meant another mouth to feed. Slavery or owning another person made no sense to these people. Once men gathered in cities and towns and there was more than enough food, having a cheap supply of labor made sense. This is when the earliest forms of slavery appeared. Slavery can be traced back to the earliest records, such as the "Code of Hammurabi" (c. 1760 BC). This refers to it as an established institution.
In the Ancient Near East, captives obtained through warfare often became slaves. This was seen by the laws in the Bible book of Deuteronomy as a legal form of slavery. But the Israelites were not allowed to enslave other Israelites. The Deuteronomic Code calls for the death penalty for the crime of kidnapping Israelites to enslave them.
In Ancient Egypt, slaves were mainly prisoners of war. Other ways people could become slaves was by inheriting the status from their parents who were slaves. Someone could become a slave if he could not pay his debts. People also sold themselves into slavery because they were poor peasants and needed food and shelter. The lives of slaves were normally better than that of peasants. Young slaves could not be put to hard work, and had to be brought up by the mistress of the household. Not all slaves went to houses. Some also sold themselves to temples, or were assigned to temples by the king. Slave trading was not very popular until later in Ancient Egypt. Afterwards, slave trades sprang up all over Egypt.
In many places, citizens were partly or fully protected from being enslaved, so most slaves were foreigners.
Slaves were important in society and the economy of ancient Rome. They did simple manual labor and domestic services, but also could have complex jobs and professions. Teachers, accountants, and physicians were often slaves. Greek slaves were often highly educated. Most slaves, like those sentenced to slavery as punishment, worked on farms, in mines, and at mills. Their living conditions were brutal, and their lives short.
Slaves were considered property under Roman law and had no legal personhood. Unlike Roman citizens, they could suffer corporal punishment, sexual exploitation (sex workers were often slaves), torture, and summary execution legally. Slave's words could not be accepted in a court of law unless the slave was tortured—a practice based on the belief that slaves would be too loyal to their masters reveal damaging evidence unless coerced. Over time, however, slaves gained some legal protection, including the right to file complaints against their masters. Attitudes changed in part because of the influence among the educated elite of the Stoics, whose egalitarian views of humanity extended to slaves, and because of slave rebellions.
Roman slaves could hold property which, even though it belonged to their masters, they were allowed to use as if it were their own. Upper class slaves were allowed to earn their own money. With enough money they could buy their freedom.
After the Roman Empire broke up, slavery gradually changed into serfdom.
Historians estimate that between 650 AD and the 1960s, 10 to 18 million people were enslaved by Arab slave traders. They were taken from Europe, Asia and Africa across the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara desert. Male slaves were often employed as servants, soldiers, or workers by their owners. Many male slaves were castrated. It is estimated that as many as 6 out of every 10 boys bled to death during the process. But the high price of Eunuchs made it worthwhile. According to Ronald Segal, author of "Islam’s Black Slaves: The Other Black Diaspora" (2002), "The calipha in Baghdad at the beginning of the 10th Century had 7,000 black eunuchs and 4,000 white eunuchs in his palace”. Women and children taken as slaves were mainly used as servants and concubines. While the later Atlantic slave trade concentrated on men for labor, the Arab slave trade started with men and boys, but shifted over time to concentrate more on woman and young girls for sexual purposes. By the 1900s, Arab slave traders had taken between 10 and 20 million slaves out of Africa.
For four centuries, beginning in the late 15th century, millions of Africans were taken as slaves by Europeans. Europeans began exporting Africans to the New World as a source of cheap labor on colonial plantations.
Between 1452 and 1455, Pope Nicolas V issued a series of papal bulls authorizing the Portuguese to take African slaves. At first slave traders raided coastal areas and carried black people off. But the mines and fields of the colonies needed more and more slaves. In the early 16th century Spain began to issue licenses and contracts to supply slaves. By the 1750s large slaving companies were established. Most of Europe at the time was involved in the slave trade.
Many Europeans who arrived in North America during the 17th and 18th centuries came under contract as indentured servants. The change from indentured servitude to slavery was a gradual process in Virginia. The earliest legal documentation of such a shift was in 1640. This is where an African, John Punch, was sentenced to lifetime slavery for attempting to run away. This case also marked the disparate treatment of Africans as held by the Virginia County Court, where two white runaways received far lesser sentences. After 1640, planters started to ignore the expiration of indentured contracts. They kept their servants as slaves for life. This was demonstrated by the case Johnson v. Parker. The court ruled that John Casor, an indentured servant, be returned to Johnson who claimed that Casor belonged to him for his life. According to the 1860 U. S. census, 393,975 individuals, representing 8% of all US families, owned 3,950,528 slaves. One-third of Southern families owned slaves. Slavery in United States was legally abolished by Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution in 1865.
Millions of people are still slaves in some parts of the world, mostly in South Asia and Africa. It is less common in the developed world because of better law enforcement, but it still happens there as well. The ways in which it is done have changed. Today, slaves may work because of things like a high debt (for example, slaves have to work to pay off a debt). Many victims are told that their families will be harmed if they report the slave owners. Many slaves are forced to be domestic servants. In some cases, their families sell them to the slave owners. Some slaves have been trafficked from one part of the world to another. These people are illegally in their host country, and therefore do not report the abuse. Forced prostitution is a type of slavery. Another form of slavery still happening today is forced child labor. Some children have to work in mines or in plantations, or they have to fight wars as child soldiers, for no pay.
One study says that there are 27 million people (but others say there could be as many as 200 million) in slavery today.
Other terms that describe the recruitement of laborers, and that may have similarities to slavery are Blackbirding, Impressment and Shanghaiing.
Some of the countries where there is still slavery are in Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. In summer 2007, 570 people were found to be slaves for brick makers in China. They included 69 children. The Chinese government made a force of 35,000 police check northern Chinese brick kilns for slaves, and sent lots of kiln supervisors and officials to prison and sentenced one kiln foreman to death for killing a worker who was a slave.
In Mauritania, it is thought that up to 600,000 men, women and children, or 20% of the population, are slaves, and that many of them are used as bonded labour. Slavery in Mauritania was made illegal in August 2007. In Niger, there is also much slavery. A Nigerian study has found that more than 800,000 people are slaves, almost 8% of the population. Child slavery has commonly been used when making cash crops and mining. According to the United States Department of State, more than 109,000 children were working on cocoa farms alone in Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) in 'the worst forms of child labour' in 2002.
In November 2006, the International Labour Organization said that it would prosecute members of the junta that rules Myanmar (also called Burma) at the International Court of Justice for "Crimes against Humanity". This is because the military makes some citizens do forced labour. The International Labour Organisation says that it thinks that about 800,000 people are forced to work this way.
Scholars of Islamic law have condemned the revival of the slave trade of non-Muslim women by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.
An agitation called Abolitionism against slavery began in Christian countries in the 18th century. First they abolished the slave trade so more people wouldn't become slaves. In 1833, the British Empire stopped slavery. Several other countries followed. In the United States, disagreement over slavery led to the American Civil War and the Emancipation Proclamation. In 1865, when the North won, all slaves were made free. Still more countries abolished slavery afterwards. Pedro II of Brazil abolished it in 1888. Forced labor however continued, either against the law or by debt peonage or other methods which the laws of the various countries did not count as slavery.
Many philosophies and religions say that a soul is the part of a living human being which is supernatural and lives after death. It is usually said to be immortal. It cannot be discovered by science, because it cannot be tested in any controlled way. Many different opinions exist as to what happens to personal experience after death.
Reincarnation is a belief that after the body dies, the soul will be born again in another body. It is important to Hinduism. Buddhists understand the idea of an eternal soul, and the idea of simple annihilation as delusion; they say that there is no unchanging, permanent self, soul or essence in phenomena. Buddhists believe in transmigration, or rebirth in samsara or other planes of existence, based on how they understand kamma (Pāli; karma in Sanskrit), and nibbana (nirvana in Sanskrit) for Enlightened ones.
Resurrection is the Christian belief that a soul returns in the same body. In most Christian denomination this was realized in Jesus Christ but is also the promise for all souls; see heaven, hell, and Final Judgement.
Most atheists say that there is no such thing as a soul, and that the body is the only part of a person.
In popular culture, soul usually means deep feeling and commitment. It is in this sense that the word appears in the term soul music. However that music was also influenced by gospel music which was religious.
One popular idea about souls that is easy to express, is that a person "is" a soul, and "has" a body. The soul is the "I" in "I exist" that feels and lives life. What people call the mind could be "part" of the soul: one soul started this article, other souls have edited it, and another soul is reading it. This view, however, implies that the human body is a possession, and seems to devalue bodies that do not have souls as defined or understood by the speaker (some people say that animals, heretics, and people of another religion do not have souls). Like most uses of the verb to be, there is an ideology in these simple words.
Christianity teaches that all humans have an immortal soul. This means that it is a part of them which does not die when their physical body dies, but lives on with them to heaven or to hell. Christians believe that the soul is the 'breath of life' which God gave to Adam.
In Japan the soul is believed to weigh 21 grams. This belief may have been influenced by the observations of in the early 1900s.
One distinction often made is between soul, which is distinct from other souls, and spirit which may be combined with that of other beings. The idea of the Holy Spirit in Christianity, for example, is a universal and shared spirit many souls are part of, and which is expressed on Earth in that faith by "the Church" meaning "the body of Christ" meaning "all bodies that follow Jesus." This could be more inclusive than the is/has view of souls and bodies.
Soap is a chemical compound resulting from the reaction of an alkali (commonly sodium or potassium hydroxide) with a fatty acid. Soaps are the metallic salts of long chain fatty acids. When mixed with water during bathing or washing, they help people and clothes get clean by lowering the chance of dirt and oil to get to the skin or fabric. Soaps are made from animal fats or vegetable oils. There are two basic steps in making soap. They are called Saponification and Salting-out of soap. Some people like to make their own soap.
Soap cleans very well in soft water. It is not toxic to water life. It can be broken down by bacteria. However, it is slightly soluble in water, so it is not often used in washing machines. It does not work well in hard water. It cannot be used in strongly acidic solutions. Mild hand soaps are only basic enough to remove unwanted skin oils. For other forms of oil, dishwashing soap is strong enough to remove almost all forms of oil without damaging petroleum products such as plastics. It does not damage skin either.
Soap has been made in many ways. Humanity has used soap-like things for thousands of years. The earliest recorded evidence of the making of soap-like materials dates back to around 2800 BC in Ancient Babylon and Sumeria. They were soap solutions, or soapy water. People made them by mixing ashes with water and fat and boiling them. The Babylonians used water, alkali and cassia to make soap.
A recipe for solid soap appeared in about 800 c.e. Gauls added salt to the soap solution to make the solid soap fall out.
The Ebers papyrus (Egypt, 1550 BC) suggests that ancient Egyptians bathed often and had animal and vegetable oils with alkaline salts to make a soap-like substance. Egyptian documents say that a soap-like substance was used in the preparation of wool for weaving.
A summary is a condensed explanation of an event, story, document, etc.. i.e. "summing up the facts." They are not constrained to any medium or topics. Not to be confused with abstract, which is a summary of a document. There are many different levels of summarization that can be done. The summarizer may choose any length, but the sumarees may not appreciate anything more than absolutely necessary to get the required facts.
Summaries help to spread information fast. They also help people make decisions on if it is something worth looking further into.
A quick "good/bad" can suffice in some situations. In other situations, the summary may rival the length of the original.
"This book was really cool. This guy drives a pickup to work everyday, and has a dangerous job."
Many scientific journals publish a summary for every large article so people who do not have much time can read the main information quickly without spending too much time reading the article.
Service economy
A service is a job or work done for someone else. All the service trades in a place form a service economy. The service economy can be in a region like a country or in a town or city.
Often, the person who gives the service will get something in return for the service. The person who gives the service can get money in return. The person who gives the service can get goods in return. The person who gives the service can get another service in return. This is a type of trade.
There are several meanings of the word sense. This page is for - there are more detailed articles on each meaning:
When a word has several meanings, one can refer to it as being used "in the sense of..." some context or other. In Simple English for instance we avoid using words in unusual senses.
The human sensory system is usually said to have six senses:
Other animals may have other senses. Fish have lateral lines which detect changes in the water pressure around them, and some can detect changes in electric fields around them.
Sense in this context is the meaning conveyed by language.
Another use is to flag whether an argument or statement is correct and understood. "That makes no sense" or "That is nonsense" are examples from everyday speech.
A variation of this is to say that something does not make "economic sense". Usually these words signal a political dispute or some failure to define terms correctly.
The term "common sense" is thinking based on a wide experience of life. It used to mean practical wisdom. It has a long history of being used in politics, often to mean that some idea will be accepted or rejected because of human nature (what people are like).
A synagogue is a place where Jews meet to worship and pray to God.
In Hebrew, a synagogue is called "beit knesset", which means, a "house of gathering". The word "synagogue" comes from "sunagoge", which is a Greek word. In a synagogue, Jews carry out the Jewish services, which consist of prayers, sometimes with special actions.
A synagogue will usually have a large room for prayers. There might be some smaller rooms for studying. There will be some offices. There will also usually be a big room for special events.
The front of a synagogue faces towards Jerusalem in Israel. In the front is the holiest part of the synagogue, the Ark. This is a closet which has the Torah scrolls inside. The Torah scrolls have the holy writings of Judaism on them. The Ark usually has a curtain in front of it.
On top of the Ark is light which is always lit, called the “Eternal Lamp”. It is a symbol which means that God is always there.
Every synagogue has a raised platform called the “Bimah”. The person who reads the Torah scroll stands there when he reads. The Bimah is either in the middle of the hall, or in front of the Ark.
In some synagogues men and women sit in different places. Some synagogues even have a short wall so that they can not see each other. This is so that the people will think about the prayers better.
Jews may call synagogues by different names. Many Orthodox and Conservative Jews living in English-speaking countries use the name "synagogue" or the word "shul", which is Yiddish. Jews who speak Spanish or Portuguese call synagogues "esnoga". Some Jews call the synagogue a temple.
Jewish worship does not have to be carried out in a synagogue. It can be wherever a minyan of ten Jews are. It could be in someone's home or anywhere such as a cruise liner or an airplane. Some synagogues have a separate room or torah study, this is called the "beth midrash" meaning house of study. Some kinds of Jewish worship can be done alone or with fewer than ten people.
Synagogues are places were Jews can worship.
Scarcity in economics is the lack of various forms of capital. Scarcity can be used to describe an economic situation in economics, or it can be used to describe more general situations.
In economics, scarcity is the result of people having "Unlimited Wants and Needs," or always wanting something new, and having "Limited Resources." Limited Resources means that there are never enough resources, or materials, to satisfy, or fulfill, the wants and needs that every person have. Scarcity is called the "basic economic problem," meaning that it always exists.
Scarcity exists due to the effects of nature such as drought, floods, storms, pest infestation, fire and other things. Real scarcity can also exist by over use of non-renewable resources. Goods (things) and services are also scarce because there are only a limited number of things in the world and due to the limits of technology and our own priorities.
More scarce goods and services have higher prices, because of supply and demand. Gold is used less than iron, but the price of gold is much higher, because gold is more scarce. Lawyers are paid more than janitors, because there is scarcity of qualified lawyers.
Scarcity of capital is the main constraint in economic development of developing countries. Economic growth is an increase in the production and consumption of goods and services. It entails increasing population or per capita consumption. It is represented by increasing Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Scarcity refers to limited resources. These resources are the inputs of production i.e., land, labor and capital.
Artificial scarcity is when somebody limits the amount of goods or services that are available, although it would be simple to make more. Artificial scarcity can increase profits for a business. Some people will pay more for something that is scarce, because it shows that they are rich (a status symbol). Copyrights, patents, monopolies, cartels, planned obsolesence can make artificial scarcity.
Readability, or textual difficulty, means how easy or hard a text is to read. Research has shown that two main factors affect the ease with which texts are read.
A readability test is a way to measure a text for how easy it is to read. Readability tests give a prediction as to how difficult readers will find a particular text. They do this by measuring one or both of the two main causes, as follows:
Word difficulty is usually measured by vocabulary lists or word length.
In 1923, Bertha A. Lively and Sidney L. Pressey published the first reading ease formula. They had been concerned that science textbooks in junior high school had so many technical words. They felt that teachers spent all class time explaining their meaning. They argued that their formula would help to measure and reduce the “vocabulary burden” of textbooks. Their formula used the Thorndike word list as a basis. Manually, it took three hours to apply the formula to a book.
Several vocabulary lists have been published by researchers. These lists are based on samples of published texts in English, and (less often) samples of recorded spoken language. The lists differ slightly according to the sources chosen, but they are very reliable. The items listed may represent more than one actual word; they are lemmas. For instance the entry "be" contains within it the occurrences of "is", "was", "be" and "are". The top 100 lemmas account for 50% of all the words in the Oxford English Corpus.
"The Reading Teachers Book of Lists" claims that the first 25 words make up about one-third of all printed material in English, and that the first 100 make up about one-half of all written material.
One of the first readability tests, the Dale–Chall formula, used a vocabulary list. It counted the number of listed words in a passage, and applied a formula which gave a grade level. It was used to rate textbooks for grade levels in US school districts.
It is easy, in principle, to use a vocabulary list as part of a computer-based readability measure. The list is organised as a look-up table. The percentage of listed words in a passage gives the data for the formula, and the user is presented with a grade level.
This is called an "index", or a "proxy". This is because word length is correlated with word frequency, and word frequency is correlated with word difficulty. "Longer words are, "on average", harder than short words".
Word length is measured by counting the letters in each word, or by counting syllables. Since most syllables have one vowel, some computer programs count vowels per average word. A few tests measure the percentage of words on a list; the list is based on the known frequency of words in a language.
Sentence difficulty is usually measured by sentence length. This again is an index, because longer sentences are, on average, harder than short sentences. Computers count the number of words between full stops, but this is a second-best method. Humans can judge whether a semi-colon or colon should count as the end of a sentence for testing purposes.
Since both factors may vary independently of each other, the best prediction is gained by devising a formula with makes use of both indices. What this means is that a single score is produced for a text, and that score is looked up on a table or graph. That tells you how difficult the text is in terms of either a) an American school grade level, or b) an artificial scale of 0% to 100%. Either way is effective. What really makes a difference is:
It is possible to get a good prediction by getting a group of subjects to read through a passage, followed by multiple-choice questions. Even better is a method called cloze, where subjects fill in blanks on a text they have not seen before. The percentage of correctly completed blanks is an outstandingly good predictor of text difficulty.
Naturally, this kind of direct measure requires subjects and a skilled experimenter. It also requires the prior preparation of texts suitable for the chosen sample of subjects. The method is therefore too expensive for widespread use.
A person can perform readability tests himself by counting and doing some math, or by using word-processing software.
Wikipedia Signposts 2015-06-24 surveyed recent studies of web information on medical topics, including articles in English wiki.
Their summary was:
That shows these articles, and presumably many other medical articles on English wiki, are written in prose far too difficult for the average member of the public.
Theatre (British English and also American English), or Theater (mostly American English), has several meanings.
The word comes originally from the Greek "Theatron", meaning roughly, 'a place to behold'. In American English, the word 'theater' can mean either a place where films are shown (this is also called a cinema) or a place where live stage plays are performed. In British English, 'theatre' means a place where live plays are performed. Some people, both English and American, use the spelling 'theatre' to mean a place where live plays are performed, and the spelling 'theater' to mean a cinema.
'Theatre' can also mean the business of putting on plays. An actor might say "I am in the theatre business", or a writer might say "I write for the theatre", meaning that they write plays, rather than writing for movies or television shows.
The first people we know created plays were the Ancient Greeks, about the year 500 B.C. They divided plays into two kinds: tragedy and comedy. This division is still used today. The best known Ancient Greek writers of plays are Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes. Some of their plays survived, and are still performed today.
These ancient Greek plays were performed outdoors in large amphitheatres, so that many people could see them. There were contests among the playwrights (people who write plays are called playwrights) and the winner would get a prize.
The Greeks had many brilliant ideas. They used mechanical devices like trap doors and the "machina": a crane for winching gods on and off the stage (hence 'Deus ex machina'). They had a "Greek chorus" that offered information to help the audience follow the performance. The chorus comments on themes, and shows how an audience might react to the drama. The players wore masks. Illustrations on vases show helmet-like masks, covering the entire face and head, with holes for the eyes and a small aperture for the mouth, plus a wig. The mask was to ‘melt’ into the face and allow the actor to vanish into the role. Therefore, onlookers did not think about the actor, but thought about the character.
In the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church began to use theatre as a way of telling the stories from the Bible to people who did not know how to read. They wrote Mystery Plays, where each part of the Bible story would be a play put on by a different group of people. They wrote "miracle plays" which were about the lives of the saints. They wrote "morality plays" which taught the audiences how to live a good Christian life.
In the 1500s, groups of actors toured around Italy performing comic plays to entertain townspeople. These plays were called Commedia dell'arte, and different stories would be created around the same group of characters. Often the spoken lines would be made up by the actors for each performance.
Other kinds of plays called Neoclassical Dramas and Neoclassical Comedies were also popular in Italy and in France at this time. These plays were written to copy the style of the plays from Ancient Greece and Rome.
At the end of the sixteenth century (before 1600), the traveling actors began to perform in fixed theatre buildings. This was the period when William Shakespeare wrote. He lived from 1564 to 1616. At that time, in England, women were not allowed to perform, so male actors would play female characters.
His theatre was in London, England. It was called The Globe Theatre. It was an outdoor theatre and plays were performed in the daytime for large audiences. His plays were very popular and many are still performed today. Many people believe Shakespeare was one of the best playwrights (a writer of plays).
Plays including Shakespeare's were banned during the Protectorate'. After that, many more were written and acted.
After World War II, playwrights in Europe and the United States began doing plays in a new style called "Theatre of the Absurd." After seeing the horrors of war, these playwrights felt that all their old values had been destroyed. Playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, Eugène Ionesco, Harold Pinter, and Jean Genet wrote plays that are considered to be "Theatre of the Absurd."
The "Theatre of the Absurd" plays have some of the same ideas that are found in the philosophy (a way of thinking) called existentialism. Existentialism is very different from many other "philosophies". Most religions and philosopies say that human life has a meaning (or a purpose). The philosophy of existentialism is that human life does not have a meaning (or a purpose). When something has no meaning, it is "absurd". (absurd means means silly and meaningless.)
The plays written in this style make people think about questions like "what is it like to be a person in the world?" and "what does it mean for a person to be free?" They are often filled with sad emotions, such as worry, fear, and thoughts about death.
Theatre breaks are a form of short holiday, based around viewing a theatrical convention show. Theatre breaks tend to include a nights hotel accommodation included in the price.
A test is a way of checking something to see if it is true, or false, or if it is edible or not. If something can be tested, or finishes the tests correctly, it is testable. The "Concise Oxford English Dictionary" defines a test as: "a procedure intended to establish the quality, performance, or reliability of something".
A test is different from an experiment: Before a test is done, there is an expected result. The test is performed, to show this result. In an experiment, the outcome is open. Very often, tests are performed as part of an experiment.
Products are usually tested for quality, so customers will get good products.
In software engineering, a test is used to see if the software system can do what it should. Software is tested before it is released. "Alpha" testing is where software developers check the software for bugs. Software can also be checked for quality and usability. "Beta" testing is done by groups of users.
Tests of cars and other vehicles include a crash test. The car is put under severe conditions to see what will make it fail, or deliberately crashed to measure the damage. Other machines can also be crash tested. Crash test dummies can be used instead of humans. They are placed in the car seat to see if a human in the crash would have been injured or killed.
People are tested to see what they have learned. This is often called an assessment or examination. In learning, a test item is a question, or set of questions.
Many people think tests are valuable. They believe tests:
However, academic tests are not perfect measures. Tests could only partly measure a student’s memory and maybe their understanding. The test would only be about a small part of the subject, and only at that moment in time.
People, animals and plants can also be tested for illnesses. For example, a blood test can be used to check for disease.
In science, tests can done to check for a presence of a substance, or to check the quality of something.
Time horizon
A time horizon is a future point in time when something must be "done" (a "deadline") or will be "over" (a "time limit"). Either way, the matter will be closed when the time horizon is reached.
Common time horizons people use are:
It is very important to know at what time horizon something you are doing will be scored, evaluated, marked or paid for.
Sports, for example football (soccer) and basketball, often have time limits. Baseball and others do not, which sometimes causes problems.
A time limit is a time horizon that is imposed on everyone at once.
It may be used to try to achieve fairness in some system of ethics. For instance, if poor people and rich people are debating something, a time limit may be imposed so that the rich people cannot keep debating until the poor people have to go to work, and lose.
Time limits are very important in accounting so that everyone can report their results (for tax and investment purposes) at the same time. This in turn creates deadlines for the accountant and those reporting.
However, the deadline is imposed by an authority, whereas the time limit is imposed by a system. So there can be slack in a deadline, so that results do not have to be reported always very fast.
For example, in the United States of America, the end of the calendar year on December 31 is the time limit for taxes, but the deadline for reporting is April 15. Sometimes the government allows more time, as it did for the families of those who were killed in the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC; Chinese: 中華民國; pinyin: Zhōnghuá Mínguó), is a region and country in East Asia. It is the nationalist government of China since its settlement in 1949. It is called the Republic of China (ROC) (also called "Taiwan") which is a special region comprising the island of Taiwan and nearby islands (Pescadores islands and parts of Fujian). The ROC government led by Chinese Nationalist (Kuomintang abbreviated as KMT) moved to Taiwan after the Communist army took over the capital of Beijing. Currently, the ROC government governs Taipei, the capital of Taiwan. Taiwan is southeast of the People's Republic of China's mainland, south of Japan, and north of the Philippines.
Taiwan has also been called Formosa, a Portuguese name which means "beautiful" in Portuguese.
The largest cities in Taiwan are the capital, Taipei, and the port city of Kaohsiung.