title: 2022 Tampa Bay Buccaneers season

text: With 3:00 left in regulation, and still holding all three of their timeouts (plus the two-minute warning), Tampa Bay kicked off to New Orleans (touchback). Alvin Kamara took a handoff on first down for a 3-yard gain, and Tampa Bay took their first timeout. On second down, Andy Dalton was sacked by Carl Nassib for a loss of 10. Tampa Bay burned their second timeout, and the Saints faced 3rd & 17 at their own 18. Dalton threw a strike deep downfield to Taysom Hill, who made the grab at the 43, but as he came down, Jamel Dean and Keanu Neal converged on him, and Neal knocked it out of his hands incomplete. Blake Gillikin punted from inside the 5, and Tampa Bay took over at their own 40 with 2:29 left. Brady made quick completions to Jones, Godwin, and Otton, then Fournette's 10-yard handoff advanced Tampa Bay to the NO 31. Three plays later, Julio Jones made a leaping grab at the 5 yard line, setting up 1st & Goal. Brady found Godwin in the endzone with 16 seconds left, but the touchdown was negated due to another "holding" penalty on Donovan Smith. Three plays later, Brady found Rachaad White on a pivot route to the right, and White dove across the goal line to score with 3 seconds left. Ryan Succop, kicked the extra point, and Tampa Bay won the game 17–16, having never used their last timeout.


title: 2022 Tampa Bay Buccaneers season

text: Tampa Bay fell to San Francisco 35–7. Rookie quarterback Brock Purdy, who was Mr. Irrelevant, threw for 185 yards and two touchdown passes, and ran for one touchdown. Tampa Bay slipped to 6–7 on the season, but still maintained their lead in the NFC South.


title: 2022 Tampa Bay Buccaneers season

text: On the first play of the game, Brock Purdy was sacked hard by a blitzing Keanu Neal, the result of a botched audible. However, Neal was flagged 15 yards for "roughing the passer", and the 49ers were awarded a first down. Five plays later, Deebo Samuel was in the endzone for a touchdown, a lead the 49ers would never surrender.


title: 2022 Tampa Bay Buccaneers season

text: Each of Tampa Bay's first half drives came up empty. Tom Brady threw a 68-yard touchdown pass to Mike Evans, but it was nullified by a "holding" penalty on Donovan Smith. Trailing 21–0 with 28 seconds left in the half, Anthony Nelson picked off Brock Purdy, but the interception was nullified by yet another penalty. One play later, Purdy connected with Brandon Aiyuk for a touchdown, and a 28–0 halftime lead.


title: 2022 Tampa Bay Buccaneers season

text: Brady threw two interceptions in the second half. Tampa Bay avoided the shutout, with Brady throwing an 8-yard touchdown to Russell Gage in the third quarter.


title: Working time

text: Working(laboring) time is the period of time that a person spends at paid labor. Unpaid labor such as personal housework or caring for children or pets is not considered part of the working week.


title: Working time

text: Many countries regulate the work week by law, such as stipulating minimum daily rest periods, annual holidays, and a maximum number of working hours per week. Working time may vary from person to person, often depending on economic conditions, location, culture, lifestyle choice, and the profitability of the individual's livelihood. For example, someone who is supporting children and paying a large mortgage might need to work more hours to meet basic costs of living than someone of the same earning power with lower housing costs. In developed countries like the United Kingdom, some workers are part-time because they are unable to find full-time work, but many choose reduced work hours to care for children or other family; some choose it simply to increase leisure time.


title: Working time

text: Standard working hours (or normal working hours) refers to the legislation to limit the working hours per day, per week, per month or per year. The employer pays higher rates for overtime hours as required in the law. Standard working hours of countries worldwide are around 40 to 44 hours per week (but not everywhere: from 35 hours per week in France to up to 105 hours per week in North Korean labor camps) and the additional overtime payments are around 25% to 50% above the normal hourly payments. Maximum working hours refers to the maximum working hours of an employee. The employee cannot work more than the level specified in the maximum working hours law. If look at the book Living in The Good Life: Helen and Scott Nearing, will find that a appropriate maximum daily working(laboring) time is 4 hours. The appropriate maximum working(laboring) hours per week is 28 hours.


title: Working time

text: The World Health Organization and the International Labour Organization estimated that globally in 2016 one in ten workers were exposed to working 55 or more hours per week and 745,000 persons died as a result of having a heart disease event or a stroke attributable to having worked these long hours, making exposure to long working hours the occupational risk factor with the largest disease burden.


title: Working time

text: Since the 1960s, the consensus among anthropologists, historians, and sociologists has been that early hunter-gatherer societies enjoyed more leisure time than is permitted by capitalist and agrarian societies; for instance, one camp of !Kung Bushmen was estimated to work two-and-a-half days per week, at around 6 hours a day. Aggregated comparisons show that on average the working day was less than five hours.


title: Working time

text: Subsequent studies in the 1970s examined the Machiguenga of the Upper Amazon and the Kayapo of northern Brazil. These studies expanded the definition of work beyond purely hunting-gathering activities, but the overall average across the hunter-gatherer societies he studied was still below 4.86 hours, while the maximum was below 8 hours. Popular perception is still aligned with the old academic consensus that hunter-gatherers worked far in excess of modern humans' forty-hour week.


title: Working time

text: The industrial revolution made it possible for a larger segment of the population to work year-round, because this labor was not tied to the season and artificial lighting made it possible to work longer each day. Peasants and farm laborers moved from rural areas to work in urban factories, and working time during the year increased significantly. Before collective bargaining and worker protection laws, there was a financial incentive for a company to maximize the return on expensive machinery by having long hours. Records indicate that work schedules as long as twelve to sixteen hours per day, six to seven days per week were practiced in some industrial sites.


title: Working time

text: Over the 20th century, work hours shortened by almost half, partly due to rising wages brought about by renewed economic growth and competition for skilled workers, with a supporting role from trade unions, collective bargaining, and progressive legislation. The workweek, in most of the industrialized world, dropped steadily, to about 40 hours after World War II. The limitation of working hours is also proclaimed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and European Social Charter. The decline continued at a faster pace in Europe: for example, France adopted a 35-hour workweek in 2000. In 1995, China adopted a 40-hour week, eliminating half-day work on Saturdays (though this is not widely practiced). Working hours in industrializing economies like South Korea, though still much higher than the leading industrial countries, are also declining steadily.


title: Working time

text: Technology has also continued to improve worker productivity, permitting standards of living to rise as hours decline. In developed economies, as the time needed to manufacture goods has declined, more working hours have become available to provide services, resulting in a shift of much of the workforce between sectors.


title: Working time

text: Economic growth in monetary terms tends to be concentrated in health care, education, government, criminal justice, corrections, and other activities rather than those that contribute directly to the production of material goods.


title: Working time

text: In the mid-2000s, the Netherlands was the first country in the industrialized world where the overall average working week dropped to less than 30 hours.


title: Working time

text: Most countries in the developed world have seen average hours worked decrease significantly. For example, in the U.S in the late 19th century it was estimated that the average work week was over 60 hours per week. Today the average hours worked in the U.S. is around 33, with the average man employed full-time for 8.4 hours per work day, and the average woman employed full-time for 7.9 hours per work day.


title: Working time

text: The front runners for lowest average weekly work hours are the Netherlands with 27 hours, and France with 30 hours. In a 2011 report of 26 OECD countries, Germany had the lowest average working hours per week at 25.6 hours.


title: Working time

text: The New Economics Foundation has recommended moving to a 21-hour standard work week to address problems with unemployment, high carbon emissions, low well-being, entrenched inequalities, overworking, family care, and the general lack of free time. Actual work week lengths have been falling in the developed world.


title: Working time

text: Factors that have contributed to lowering average work hours and increasing standard of living have been:


title: Working time

text: Recent articles supporting a four-day week have argued that reduced work hours would increase consumption and invigorate the economy. However, other articles state that consumption would decrease, which could reduce the environmental impact. Other arguments for the four-day week include improvements to workers' level of education (due to having extra time to take classes and courses) and improvements to workers' health (less work-related stress and extra time for exercise). Reduced hours also save money on day care costs and transportation, which in turn helps the environment with less carbon-related emissions. These benefits increase workforce productivity on a per-hour basis.


title: Working time

text: The structure of the work week varies considerably for different professions and cultures. Among salaried workers in the western world, the work week often consists of Monday to Friday or Saturday with the weekend set aside as a time of personal work and leisure. Sunday is set aside in the western world because it is the Christian sabbath.


title: Working time

text: The traditional American business hours are 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday to Friday, representing a workweek of five eight-hour days comprising 40 hours in total. These are the origin of the phrase 9-to-5, used to describe a conventional and possibly tedious job. Negatively used, it connotes a tedious or unremarkable occupation. The phrase also indicates that a person is an employee, usually in a large company, rather than an entrepreneur or self-employed. More neutrally, it connotes a job with stable hours and low career risk, but still a position of subordinate employment. The actual time at work often varies between 35 and 48 hours in practice due to the inclusion, or lack of inclusion, of breaks. In many traditional white collar positions, employees were required to be in the office during these hours to take orders from the bosses, hence the relationship between this phrase and subordination. Workplace hours have become more flexible, but the phrase is still commonly used even in situations where the term does not apply literally.


title: Working time

text: In most European Union countries, working time is gradually decreasing. The European Union's working time directive imposes a 48-hour maximum working week that applies to every member state except Malta (which have an opt-out, meaning that employees in Malta may work longer than 48 hours if they wish, but they cannot be forced to do so). A major reason for the lower annual hours worked in Europe is a relatively high amount of paid annual leave. Fixed employment comes with four to six weeks of holiday as standard.


title: Working time

text: France experimented in 2000 with a sharp cut of legal or statutory working time of the employees in the private and public sector from 39 hours a week to 35 hours a week, with the stated goal to fight against rampant unemployment at that time. The Law 2000–37 on working time reduction is also referred to as the Aubry Law, according to the name of the Labor Minister at that time.


title: Working time

text: Employees may (and do) work more than 35 hours a week, yet in this case firms must pay them overtime bonuses. If the bonus is determined through collective negotiations, it cannot be lower than 10%. If no agreement on working time is signed, the legal bonus must be of 25% for the first 8 hours, then goes up to 50% for the rest.


title: Working time

text: Including overtime, the maximum working time cannot exceed 48 hours per week, and should not exceed 44 hours per week over 12 weeks in a row.


title: Working time

text: In France the labor law also regulates the minimum working hours: part-time jobs should not allow for less than 24 hours per week without a branch collective agreement. These agreements can allow for less, under tight conditions.


title: Working time

text: According to the official statistics (DARES), after the introduction of the law on working time reduction, actual hours per week performed by full-time employed, fell from 39.6 hours in 1999, to a trough of 37.7 hours in 2002, then gradually went back to 39.1 hours in 2005. In 2016 working hours were of 39.1.


title: Working time

text: South Korea has the fastest shortening working time in the OECD, which is the result of the government's proactive move to lower working hours at all levels and to increase leisure and relaxation time, which introduced the mandatory forty-hour, five-day working week in 2004 for companies with over 1,000 employees. Beyond regular working hours, it is legal to demand up to 12 hours of overtime during the week, plus another 16 hours on weekends. The 40-hour workweek expanded to companies with 300 employees or more in 2005, 100 employees or more in 2006, 50 or more in 2007, 20 or more in 2008 and a full inclusion to all workers nationwide in July 2011. The government has continuously increased public holidays to 16 days in 2013, more than the 10 days of the United States and double that of the United Kingdom's 8 days. Despite those efforts, South Korea's work hours are still relatively long, with an average 1,967 hours per year in 2019.


title: Working time

text: Work hours in Japan are decreasing, but many Japanese still work long hours. Recently, Japan's Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW) issued a draft report recommending major changes to the regulations that govern working hours. The centerpiece of the proposal is an exemption from overtime pay for white-collar workers. Japan has enacted an 8-hour work day and 40-hour work week (44 hours in specified workplaces). The overtime limits are: 15 hours a week, 27 hours over two weeks, 43 hours over four weeks, 45 hours a month, 81 hours over two months and 120 hours over three months; however, some workers get around these restrictions by working several hours a day without 'clocking in' whether physically or metaphorically. The overtime allowance should not be lower than 125% and not more than 150% of the normal hourly rate. Workaholism in Japan is considered a serious social problem leading to early death, a phenomenon dubbed "karōshi", meaning death from overwork.


title: Working time

text: Mexican laws mandate a maximum of 48 hours of work per week, but they are rarely observed or enforced due to loopholes in the law, the volatility of labor rights in Mexico, and its underdevelopment relative to other members countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Indeed, private sector employees often work overtime without receiving overtime compensation. Fear of unemployment and threats by employers explain in part why the 48-hour work week is disregarded.


title: Working time

text: Articles 161 to 167 of the Substantive Work Code in Colombia provide for a maximum of 48 hours of work a week. Also, the law notes that workdays should be divided into 2 sections to allow a break, usually given as the meal time which is not counted as work. Typically, there is a 2-hours break for lunch that starts from 12:00 through 13:00. In June 2021, the Colombian Congress approved a bill for the reduction of the work-week, from 48 to 42 hours, which will be implemented in several stages, from 2023 to 2026.


title: Working time

text: The main labor law in Spain, the Workers' Statute Act, limits the amount of working time that an employee is obliged to perform. In the Article 34 of this law, a maximum of 9 hours per day and 40 hours per week are established.<ref name="IUSLabor 1/2016 54-65"></ref>


title: Working time

text: Employees typically receive either 12 or 14 payments per year, with approximately 21 days of vacation. According to Spanish law, Spain holds what is known as the Convenios-Colectivos, which stipulates that different regulations and laws regarding employee work week and wage apply based on the type of job. Overall they rank as the 13th highest in regard to international GDP growth.


title: Working time

text: According to a study of the OECD Better Life Index, 4% of Spanish workers work more than 50 hours per week, compared to an average of 11% of workers in OECD countries.


title: Working time

text: Working hours are regulated by law. Mandatory logging of employee working time has been in place since 2019 in an attempt by legislators to eliminate unpaid overtime and push for more transparency of actual working hours. Non-regulated pauses during the workday for coffee or smoking are not permitted to be documented as working time, according to a ruling by The Spanish National Court in February 2020.


title: Working time

text: However, one of the interesting aspects of the Spanish work day and labor is the traditional presence of a break around lunchtime. It is sometimes mistakenly thought to be due to siesta, but in fact was due to workers returning to their families for the main midday meal. That break, typically of 1 or 2 hours, has been kept in the working culture because in the post-civil-war period most workers had two jobs to be able to sustain their families. Following this tradition, in small and medium-sized cities, restaurants and businesses shut down during this time period of 2-5 for retail and 4-8 for restaurants. Many office jobs only allow one hour or even a half hour breaks to eat the meal in office building restaurants or designated lunch rooms.


title: Working time

text: A majority of adults emphasize the lack of a siesta during the typical work week. Only one in ten Spaniards take a mid-day nap, a percentage less than other European nations.


title: Working time

text: In Australia, between 1974 and 1997 no marked change took place in the average amount of time spent at work by Australians of "prime working age" (that is, between 25 and 54 years of age). Throughout this period, the average time spent at work by prime working-age Australians (including those who did not spend any time at work) remained stable at between 27 and 28 hours per week. This unchanging average, however, masks a significant redistribution of work from men to women. Between 1974 and 1997, the average time spent at work by prime working-age Australian men fell from 45 to 36 hours per week, while the average time spent at work by prime working-age Australian women rose from 12 to 19 hours per week. In the period leading up to 1997, the amount of time Australian workers spent at work outside the hours of 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays also increased.


title: Working time

text: In 2009, a rapid increase in the number of working hours was reported in a study by The Australia Institute. The study found the average Australian worked 1855 hours per year at work. According to Clive Hamilton of The Australia Institute, this surpasses even Japan. The Australia Institute believes that Australians work the highest number of hours in the developed world.


title: Working time

text: The vast majority of full-time employees in Australia work additional overtime hours. A 2015 survey found that of Australia's 7.7 million full-time workers, 5 million put in more than 40 hours a week, including 1.4 million who worked more than 50 hours a week and 270,000 who put in more than 70 hours.


title: Working time

text: In 2016, the average man employed full-time worked 8.4 hours per work day, and the average woman employed full-time worked 7.8 hours per work day. There is no mandatory minimum amount of paid time off for sickness or holiday but the majority of full-time civilian workers have access to paid vacation time.


title: Working time

text: By 1946, the United States government had inaugurated the 40-hour work week for all federal employees. Beginning in 1950, under the Truman Administration, the United States became the first known industrialized nation to explicitly (albeit secretly) and permanently forswear a reduction of working time. Given the military-industrial requirements of the Cold War, the authors of the then secret National Security Council Report 68 (NSC-68) proposed the US government undertake a massive permanent national economic expansion that would let it "siphon off" a part of the economic activity produced to support an ongoing military buildup to contain the Soviet Union. In his 1951 Annual Message to the Congress, President Truman stated:


title: Working time

text: In terms of manpower, our present defense targets will require an increase of nearly one million men and women in the armed forces within a few months, and probably not less than four million more in defense production by the end of the year. This means that an additional 8 percent of our labor force, and possibly much more, will be required by direct defense needs by the end of the year.


title: Working time

text: These manpower needs will call both for increasing our labor force by reducing unemployment and drawing in women and older workers, and for lengthening hours of work in essential industries.


title: Working time

text: According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average non-farm private sector employee worked 34.5 hours per week as of June 2012.


title: Working time

text: As President Truman's 1951 message had predicted, the share of working women rose from 30 percent of the labor force in 1950 to 47 percent by 2000 – growing at a particularly rapid rate during the 1970s. According to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report issued May 2002, "In 1950, the overall participation rate of women was 34 percent. ... The rate rose to 38 percent in 1960, 43 percent in 1970, 52 percent in 1980, and 58 percent in 1990 and reached 60 percent by 2000. The overall labor force participation rate of women is projected to attain its highest level in 2010, at 62 percent." The inclusion of women in the work force can be seen as symbolic of social progress as well as of increasing American productivity and hours worked.


title: Working time

text: Between 1950 and 2007 official price inflation was measured to 861 percent. President Truman, in his 1951 message to Congress, predicted correctly that his military buildup "will cause intense and mounting inflationary pressures." Using the data provided by the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics, Erik Rauch has estimated productivity to have increased by nearly 400%. According to Rauch, "if productivity means anything at all, a worker should be able to earn the same standard of living as a 1950 worker in only 11 hours per week."


title: Working time

text: In the United States, the working time for upper-income professionals has increased compared to 1965, while total annual working time for low-skill, low-income workers has decreased. This effect is sometimes called the "leisure gap".


title: Working time

text: The average working time of married couples – of both spouses taken together – rose from 56 hours in 1969 to 67 hours in 2000.


title: Working time

text: Many professional workers put in longer hours than the forty-hour standard. In professional industries like investment banking and large law firms, a forty-hour workweek is considered inadequate and may result in job loss or failure to be promoted. Medical residents in the United States routinely work long hours as part of their training.


title: Working time

text: Workweek policies are not uniform in the U.S. Many compensation arrangements are legal, and three of the most common are "wage", "commission", and "salary" payment schemes. Wage earners are compensated on a per-hour basis, whereas salaried workers are compensated on a per-week or per-job basis, and commission workers get paid according to how much they produce or sell.


title: Working time

text: Under most circumstances, wage earners and lower-level employees may be legally required by an employer to work more than forty hours in a week; however, they are paid extra for the additional work. Many salaried workers and commission-paid sales staff are not covered by overtime laws. These are generally called "exempt" positions, because they are exempt from federal and state laws that mandate extra pay for extra time worked. The rules are complex, but generally exempt workers are executives, professionals, or sales staff. For example, school teachers are not paid extra for working extra hours. Business owners and independent contractors are considered self-employed, and none of these laws apply to them.


title: Working time

text: Generally, workers are paid "time-and-a-half", or 1.5 times the worker's base wage, for each hour of work past forty. California also applies this rule to work in excess of eight hours per day, but exemptions and exceptions significantly limit the applicability of this law.


title: Working time

text: In some states, firms are required to pay "double-time", or twice the base rate, for each hour of work past 60, or each hour of work past 12 in one day in California, also subject to numerous exemptions and exceptions. This provides an incentive for companies to limit working time, but makes these additional hours more desirable for the worker. It is not uncommon for overtime hours to be accepted voluntarily by wage-earning workers. Unions often treat overtime as a desirable commodity when negotiating how these opportunities shall be partitioned among union members.


title: Working time

text: Brazil has a 44-hour work week, normally 8 hours per day and 4 hours on Saturday or 8.8 hours per day. Jobs with no meal breaks or on-duty meal breaks are 6 hours per day. Public servants work 40 hours per week.


title: Working time

text: Lunch breaks are one hour and are not usually counted as work. A typical work schedule is 8:00 or 9:00–12:00, 13:00–18:00. In larger cities, workers eat lunch on or near their work site, while some workers in smaller cities may go home for lunch.


title: Working time

text: A 30-day vacation is mandated by law. Holidays vary by municipality with approximately 13 to 15 holidays per year.


title: Working time

text: China adopted a 40-hour week, eliminating half-day work on Saturdays. However, this rule has never been truly enforced, and unpaid or underpaid overtime working is common practice in China.


title: Working time

text: Traditionally, Chinese have worked long hours, and this has led to many deaths from overwork, with the state media reporting in 2014 that 600,000 people were dying suddenly annually, some of them were dying from overwork. Despite this, work hours have reportedly been falling for about three decades due to rising productivity, better labor laws, and the spread of the two-day weekend. The trend has affected both factories and white-collar companies that have been responding to growing demands for easier work schedules.


title: Working time

text: The 996 working hour system, as it is known, is where employees work from 09:00 to 21:00, six days a week, excluding two hours of lunch & nap during the noon and one hour of supper in the evening. Alibaba founder Jack (Yun) Ma, and JD.Com founder Richard (Qiangdong) Liu both praise the 996 schedule, saying such a schedule has helped Chinese tech giants like Alibaba and Tencent grow to become what they are today.


title: Working time

text: The average weekly working hours of full-time employees in Hong Kong is 49 hours. According to the Price and Earnings Report 2012 conducted by UBS, while the global and regional average were 1,915 and 2,154 hours per year respectively, the average working hours in Hong Kong is 2,296 hours per year, which ranked the fifth longest yearly working hours among 72 countries under study. In addition, from the survey conducted by the Public Opinion Study Group of the University of Hong Kong, 79% of the respondents agree that the problem of overtime work in Hong Kong is "severe", and 65% of the respondents support the legislation on the maximum working hours. In Hong Kong, 70% of surveyed do not receive any overtime remuneration. These show that people in Hong Kong concerns the working time issues. As Hong Kong implemented the minimum wage law in May 2011, the Chief Executive, Donald Tsang, of the Special Administrative Region pledged that the government will standardize working hours in Hong Kong.


title: Working time

text: On 26 November 2012, the Labour Department of the HKSAR released the "Report of the policy study on standard working hours". The report covers three major areas, including: (1) the regimes and experience of other places in regulating working hours, (2) latest working time situations of employees in different sectors, and (3) estimation of the possible impact of introducing standard working hour in Hong Kong. Under the selected parameters, from most loosen to most stringent, the estimated increase in labour cost vary from 1.1 billion to 55 billion HKD, and affect 957,100 (36.7% of total employees) to 2,378,900 (91.1% of total) employees.


title: Working time

text: Various sectors of the community show concerns about the standard working hours in Hong Kong. The points are summarized as below:


title: Working time

text: Hong Kong Catholic Commission For Labour Affairs urges the government to legislate the standard working hours in Hong Kong, and suggests a 44 hours standard, 54 hours maximum working hours in a week. The organization thinks that long working time adversely affects the family and social life and health of employees; it also indicates that the current Employment Ordinance does not regulate overtime pays, working time limits nor rest day pays, which can protect employees rights.


title: Working time

text: Generally, business sector agrees that it is important to achieve work–life balance, but does not support a legislation to regulate working hours limit. They believe "standard working hours" is not the best way to achieve work–life balance and the root cause of the long working hours in Hong Kong is due to insufficient labor supply. The managing director of Century Environmental Services Group, Catherine Yan, said "Employees may want to work more to obtain a higher salary due to financial reasons. If standard working hour legislation is passed, employers will need to pay a higher salary to employees, and hence the employers may choose to segment work tasks to employer more part time employees instead of providing overtime pay to employees." She thinks this will lead to a situation that the employees may need to find two part-time jobs to earn their living, making them wasting more time on transportation from one job to another.


title: Working time

text: The Chairman of the Hong Kong General Chamber of Commerce, Chow Chung-kong believes that it is so difficult to implement standard working hours that apply "across-the-board", specifically, to accountants and barristers. In addition, he believes that standard working hours may decrease individual employees' working hours and would not increase their actual income. It may also lead to an increase of number of part-timers in the labor market.


title: Working time

text: According to a study conducted jointly by the Business, Economic and Public Affairs Research Centre and Enterprise and Social Development Research Centre of Hong Kong Shue Yan University, 16% surveyed companies believe that a standard working hours policy can be considered, and 55% surveyed think that it would be difficult to implement standard working hours in businesses.


title: Working time

text: Employer representative in the Labour Advisory Board, Stanley Lau, said that standard working hours will completely alter the business environment of Hong Kong, affect small and medium enterprise and weaken competitiveness of businesses. He believes that the government can encourage employers to pay overtime salary, and there is no need to regulate standard working hours.


title: Working time

text: On 17–18 October 2012, the Legislative Council members in Hong Kong debated on the motion "legislation for the regulation of working hours". Cheung Kwok-che proposed the motion "That is the Council urges the Government to introduce a bill on the regulation of working hours within this legislative session, the contents of which must include the number of standard weekly hours and overtime pay". As the motion was not passed by both functional constituencies and geographical constituencies, it was negatived.


title: Working time

text: The Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions suggested a standard 44-hour work week with overtime pay of 1.5 times the usual pay. It believes the regulation of standard working hour can prevent the employers to force employees to work (overtime) without pay.


title: Working time

text: Elizabeth Quat of the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong (DAB), believed that standard working hours were a labor policy and was not related to family-friendly policies. The Vice President of Young DAB, Wai-hung Chan, stated that standard working hours would bring limitations to small and medium enterprises. He thought that the government should discuss the topic with the public more before legislating standard working hours.


title: Working time

text: The Democratic Party suggested a 44-hour standard work week and compulsory overtime pay to help achieve the balance between work, rest and entertainment of people in Hong Kong.


title: Working time

text: The Labour Party believed regulating working hours could help achieve a work–life balance. It suggests an 8-hour work day, a 44-hour standard work week, a 60-hour maximum work week and an overtime pay of 1.5 times the usual pay.


title: Working time

text: Poon Siu-ping of Federation of Hong Kong and Kowloon Labour Unions thought that it is possible to set work hour limit for all industries; and the regulation on working hours can ensure the overtime payment by employers to employees, and protect employees' health.


title: Working time

text: The Civic party suggests "to actively study setting weekly standard working hours at 44 hours to align with family-friendly policies" in LegCo Election 2012.


title: Working time

text: Member of Economic Synergy, Jeffery Lam, believes that standard working hours would adversely affect productivity, tense the employer-employee relationship, and increase the pressure faced by businesses who suffer from inadequate workers. He does not support the regulation on working hours at its current situation.


title: Working time

text: Matthew Cheung Kin-chung, the Secretary for Labour and Welfare Bureau, said the Executive Council has already received the government report on working hours in June, and the Labour Advisory Board and the LegCo's Manpower Panel will receive the report in late November and December respectively. On 26 November 2012, the Labour Department released the report, and the report covered the regimes and experience of practicing standard working hours in selected regions, current work hour situations in different industries, and the impact assessment of standard working hours. Also, Matthew Cheung mentioned that the government will form a select committee by first quarter of 2013, which will include government officials, representative of labor unions and employers' associations, academics and community leaders, to investigate the related issues. He also said that it would "perhaps be unrealistic" to put forward a bill for standard working hours in the next one to two years.


title: Working time

text: Yip Siu-fai, Professor of the Department of Social Work and Social Administration of HKU, has noted that professions such as nursing and accountancy have long working hours and that this may affect people's social life. He believes that standard working hours could help to give Hong Kong more family-friendly workplaces and to increase fertility rates. Randy Chiu, Professor of the Department of Management of HKBU, has said that introducing standard working hours could avoid excessively long working hours of employees. He also said that nowadays Hong Kong attains almost full employment, has a high rental price and severe inflation, recently implemented minimum wage, and is affected by a gloomy global economy; he also mentioned that comprehensive considerations on macroeconomic situations are needed, and emphasized that it is perhaps inappropriate to adopt working-time regulation as exemplified in other countries to Hong Kong.


title: Working time

text: Lee Shu-Kam, Associate Professor of the Department of Economics and Finance of HKSYU, believes that standard working hours cannot deliver "work–life balance". He referenced the research to the US by the University of California, Los Angeles in 1999 and pointed out that in the industries and regions in which the wage elasticity is low, the effects of standard working hours on lowering actual working time and increasing wages is limited: for regions where the labor supply is inadequate, standard working hours can protect employees' benefits yet cause unemployment; but for regions (such as Japan) where the problem does not exist, standard working hours would only lead to unemployment. In addition, he said the effect of standard working hours is similar to that of (for example) giving overtime pay, making employees to favor overtime work more. In this sense, introducing standard working hours does not match its principle: to shorten work time and to increase the recreation time of employees. He believed that the key point is to help employees to achieve work–life balance and to get a win-win situation of employers and employees.


title: Working time

text: Francis Lui, Head and Professor of the Department of Economics of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, believed that standard working hours may not lower work time but increase unemployment. He used Japan as an example to illustrate that the implementation of standard working hours lowered productivity per head and demotivated the economy. He also said that even if the standard working hours can shorten employees' weekly working hours, they may need to work for more years to earn sufficient amount of money for retirement, i.e. delay their retirement age. The total working time over the course of a lifetime may not change.


title: Working time

text: Lok-sang Ho, Professor of Economics and Director of the Centre for Public Policy Studies of Lingnan University, pointed out that "as different employees perform various jobs and under different degrees of pressures, it may not be appropriate to establish standard working hours in Hong Kong"; and he proposed a 50-hour maximum work week to protect workers' health.


title: Working time

text: In 2018, Taiwan had the world's 4th longest work hour and 2nd in Asia, with the average number of work hours hit 2,033 hours. There had been reduction in the work hours by 122 from 2008 to 2018.


title: Working time

text: Since 1 September 2022, the weekly work hour in Malaysia was reduced from 48 hours to 45 hours after it was promulgated in the Dewan Negara.


title: Working time

text: Singapore has an 8-hour normal work day (9 hours including lunchtime), a 45-hour normal working week, and a maximum 48-hour work week. If the employee works no more than five days a week, the employee's normal working day is 9 hours and the working week is 44 hours. Also, if the number of hours worked by the worker is less than 44 hours every alternate week, the 44-hour weekly limit may be exceeded in the other week. However, this is subject to the pre-specification in the service contract, and the maximum should not exceed 48 hours per week or 88 hours in any consecutive two week period. In addition, a shift worker can work up to 12 hours a day, provided that the average working hours per week do not exceed 44 over a consecutive three-week period. The overtime allowance per overtime hour must not be less than 1.5 times the employee's hourly basic rates.


title: Major scale

text: The major scale (or Ionian mode) is one of the most commonly used musical scales, especially in Western music. It is one of the diatonic scales. Like many musical scales, it is made up of seven notes: the eighth duplicates the first at double its frequency so that it is called a higher octave of the same note (from Latin "octavus", the eighth).


title: Major scale

text: The major scale had a central importance in Western music, particularly in the common practice period and in popular music.


title: Major scale

text: In Carnatic music, it is known as "Sankarabharanam". In Hindustani classical music, it is known as "Bilaval".


title: Major scale

text: where "whole" stands for a whole tone (a red u-shaped curve in the figure), and "half" stands for a semitone (a red angled line in the figure).


title: Major scale

text: A major scale may be seen as two identical tetrachords separated by a whole tone. Each tetrachord consists of two whole tones followed by a semitone (i.e. whole, whole, half).


title: Major scale

text: The triads built on each scale degree follow a distinct pattern. The roman numeral analysis is shown in parentheses.


title: Major scale

text: The seventh chords built on each scale degree follow a distinct pattern. The roman numeral analysis is shown in parentheses.


title: Major scale

text: If a piece of music (or part of a piece of music) is in a major key, then the notes in the corresponding major scale are considered "diatonic" notes, while the notes "outside" the major scale are considered "chromatic" notes. Moreover, the key signature of the piece of music (or section) will generally reflect the accidentals in the corresponding major scale.


title: Major scale

text: For instance, if a piece of music is in E major, then the seven pitches in the E major scale (E, F, G, A, B, C and D) are considered diatonic pitches, and the other five pitches (E, F/G, A, B, and C/D) are considered chromatic pitches. In this case, the key signature will have three flats (B, E, and A).


title: Major scale

text: The figure below shows all 12 relative major and minor keys, with major keys on the outside and minor keys on the inside arranged around the circle of fifths.


title: Major scale

text: The numbers inside the circle show the number of sharps or flats in the key signature, with the sharp keys going clockwise, and the flat keys counterclockwise from C major (which has no sharps or flats.) The circular arrangement depends on enharmonic relationships in the circle, usually reckoned at six sharps or flats for the major keys of F = G and D = E for minor keys. Seven sharps or flats make major keys (C major or C major) that may be more conveniently spelled with five flats or sharps (as D major or B major).


title: Major scale

text: The term "major scale" is also used in the names of some other scales whose first, third, and fifth degrees form a major triad.


title: Major scale

text: The harmonic major scale has a minor sixth. It differs from the harmonic minor scale only by raising the third degree.


title: Major scale

text: The first is the fifth mode of the jazz minor scale, which can be thought of as the major scale (Ionian mode) with a lowered sixth and seventh degree or the natural minor scale (Aeolian mode) with a raised third.


title: Major scale

text: The second is the combined scale that goes as Ionian ascending and as the previous melodic major descending. It differs from melodic minor scale only by raising the third degree to a major third.


title: Major scale

text: The double harmonic major scale has a minor second and a minor sixth. It is the fifth mode of the Hungarian minor scale.


title: World Turtle

text: The World Turtle, also called the Cosmic Turtle or the World-bearing Turtle, is a mytheme of a giant turtle (or tortoise) supporting or containing the world. It occurs in Hindu mythology, Chinese mythology, and the mythologies of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. The comparative mythology of the World-Tortoise discussed by Edward Burnett Tylor (1878:341) includes the counterpart World Elephant.


title: World Turtle

text: The World Turtle in Hindu mythology is known as "Akūpāra" (Sanskrit: अकूपार), or sometimes "Chukwa". An example of a reference to the World Turtle in Hindu literature is found in Jñānarāja (the author of "Siddhāntasundara", writing c. 1500): "A vulture, whichever has only little strength, rests in the sky holding a snake in its beak for a prahara [three hours]. Why can [the deity] in the form of a tortoise, who possesses an inconceivable potency, not hold the Earth in the sky for a "kalpa" [billions of years]?"


title: World Turtle

text: The British philosopher John Locke made reference to this in his 1689 tract, "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding", which compares one who would say that properties inhere in "substance" to the Indian, who said the world was on an elephant, which was on a tortoise, "but being again pressed to know what gave support to the broad-backed tortoise, replied—something, he knew not what".


title: World Turtle

text: "Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable" lists, without citation, "Maha-pudma and Chukwa" as names from a "popular rendition of a Hindu myth in which the tortoise Chukwa supports the elephant Maha-pudma, which in turn supports the world".


title: World Turtle

text: In Chinese mythology, the creator goddess Nüwa cut the legs off the giant sea turtle Ao () and used them to prop up the sky after Gong Gong damaged Mount Buzhou, which had previously supported the heavens.


title: World Turtle

text: The Lenape creation story of the "Great Turtle" was first recorded between 1678 and 1680 by Jasper Danckaerts. The belief is shared by other indigenous peoples of the Northeastern Woodlands, most notably those of the Haudenosanee confederacy, and the Anishinaabeg.


title: World Turtle

text: 'When the Father was explaining to them [some Huron seminarists] some circumstance of the passion of our Lord, and speaking to them of the eclipse of the Sun, and of the trembling of the earth which was felt at that time, they replied that there was talk in their own country of a great earthquake which had happened in former times; but they did not know either the time or the cause of that disturbance. "There is still talk," (said they) "of a very remarkable darkening of the Sun, which was supposed to have happened because the great turtle which upholds the earth, in changing its position or place, brought its shell before the Sun, and thus deprived the world of sight."'


title: World Turtle

text: The "Discworld" series, created by Terry Pratchett, takes place on a fictional world that is a flat disc sitting on top of four elephants astride the shell of a giant turtle named Great A'Tuin.


title: World Turtle

text: In the book "Monday Begins on Saturday" by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, a disc upon elephants on a turtle is said to have been discovered by a pupil who entered an ideal world of imagination.


title: World Turtle

text: In the start of the first chapter of Stephen Hawking's "A Brief History Of Time," an old woman says: ”What you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a giant tortoise.”


title: World Turtle

text: The film "Strange World" is revealed to take place on and inside a World Turtle, with the characters trying to stop an infection from killing it.


title: World Turtle

text: The regress argument in epistemology and the infinite regress in philosophy often use the expression "turtles all the way down" to indicate an explanatory failure based on an explanation that needs a potentially infinite series of additional explanations to support it.


title: Spring Framework

text: The Spring Framework is an application framework and inversion of control container for the Java platform. The framework's core features can be used by any Java application, but there are extensions for building web applications on top of the Java EE (Enterprise Edition) platform. Although the framework does not impose any specific programming model, it has become popular in the Java community as an addition to the Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB) model. The Spring Framework is open source.


title: Spring Framework

text: The first version was written by Rod Johnson, who released the framework with the publication of his book "Expert One-on-One J2EE Design and Development" in October 2002. The framework was first released under the Apache 2.0 license in June 2003. The first production release, 1.0, was released in March 2004. The Spring 1.2.6 framework won a Jolt productivity award and a JAX Innovation Award in 2006. Spring 2.0 was released in October 2006, Spring 2.5 in November 2007, Spring 3.0 in December 2009, Spring 3.1 in December 2011, and Spring 3.2.5 in November 2013. Spring Framework 4.0 was released in December 2013. Notable improvements in Spring 4.0 included support for Java SE (Standard Edition) 8, Groovy 2, some aspects of Java EE 7, and WebSocket.


title: Spring Framework

text: Spring Framework 4.2.0 was released on 31 July 2015 and was immediately upgraded to version 4.2.1, which was released on 01 Sept 2015. It is ""compatible with Java 6, 7 and 8, with a focus on core refinements and modern web capabilities"".


title: Spring Framework

text: Spring Framework 4.3 has been released on 10 June 2016 and will be supported until 2020. It ""will be the final generation within the general Spring 4 system requirements (Java 6+, Servlet 2.5+), [...]"".


title: Spring Framework

text: Spring Framework 6.0 has been released on 16 November 2022 and came with a Java 17+ baseline and a move to Jakarta EE 9+ (in the codice_1 namespace), with a focus on the recently released Jakarta EE 10 APIs such as Servlet 6.0 and JPA 3.1.


title: Spring Framework

text: Central to the Spring Framework is its inversion of control (IoC) container, which provides a consistent means of configuring and managing Java objects using reflection. The container is responsible for managing object lifecycles of specific objects: creating these objects, calling their initialization methods, and configuring these objects by wiring them together.


title: Spring Framework

text: Objects created by the container are also called managed objects or beans. The container can be configured by loading XML (Extensible Markup Language) files or detecting specific Java annotations on configuration classes. These data sources contain the bean definitions that provide the information required to create the beans.


title: Spring Framework

text: Objects can be obtained by means of either dependency lookup or dependency injection. Dependency lookup is a pattern where a caller asks the container object for an object with a specific name or of a specific type. Dependency injection is a pattern where the container passes objects by name to other objects, via either constructors, properties, or factory methods.


title: Spring Framework

text: In many cases one need not use the container when using other parts of the Spring Framework, although using it will likely make an application easier to configure and customize. The Spring container provides a consistent mechanism to configure applications and integrates with almost all Java environments, from small-scale applications to large enterprise applications.


title: Spring Framework

text: The container can be turned into a partially compliant EJB (Enterprise JavaBeans) 3.0 container by means of the Pitchfork project. Some criticize the Spring Framework for not complying with standards. However, SpringSource doesn't see EJB 3 compliance as a major goal, and claims that the Spring Framework and the container allow for more powerful programming models.


title: Spring Framework

text: The programmer does not directly create an object, but describes how it should be created, by defining it in the Spring configuration file. Similarly services and components are not called directly; instead a Spring configuration file defines which services and components must be called. This IoC is intended to increase the ease of maintenance and testing.


title: Spring Framework

text: The Spring Framework has its own Aspect-oriented programming (AOP) framework that modularizes cross-cutting concerns in aspects. The motivation for creating a separate AOP framework comes from the belief that it should be possible to provide basic AOP features without too much complexity in either design, implementation, or configuration. The Spring AOP framework also takes full advantage of the Spring container.


title: Spring Framework

text: The Spring AOP framework is proxy pattern-based, and is configured at run time. This removes the need for a compilation step or load-time weaving. On the other hand, interception only allows for public method-execution on existing objects at a join point.


title: Spring Framework

text: Compared to the AspectJ framework, Spring AOP is less powerful, but also less complicated. Spring 1.2 includes support to configure AspectJ aspects in the container. Spring 2.0 added more integration with AspectJ; for example, the pointcut language is reused and can be mixed with Spring AOP-based aspects. Further, Spring 2.0 added a Spring Aspects library that uses AspectJ to offer common Spring features such as declarative transaction management and dependency injection via AspectJ compile-time or load-time weaving. SpringSource also uses AspectJ AOP in other Spring projects such as Spring Roo and Spring Insight, with Spring Security also offering an AspectJ-based aspect library.


title: Spring Framework

text: Spring AOP has been designed to make it able to work with cross-cutting concerns inside the Spring Framework. Any object which is created and configured by the container can be enriched using Spring AOP.


title: Spring Framework

text: The Spring Framework uses Spring AOP internally for transaction management, security, remote access, and JMX.


title: Spring Framework

text: The Spring team decided not to introduce new AOP-related terminology; therefore, in the Spring reference documentation and API, terms such as aspect, join point, advice, pointcut, introduction, target object (advised object), AOP proxy, and weaving all have the same meanings as in most other AOP frameworks (particularly AspectJ).


title: Spring Framework

text: Spring's data access framework addresses common difficulties developers face when working with databases in applications. Support is provided for all popular data access frameworks in Java: JDBC, iBatis/MyBatis, Hibernate, Java Data Objects (JDO, discontinued since 5.x), Jakarta Persistence API (JPA), Oracle TopLink, Apache OJB, and Apache Cayenne, among others.


title: Spring Framework

text: All these features become available when using template classes provided by Spring for each supported framework. Critics have said these template classes are intrusive and offer no advantage over using (for example) the Hibernate API directly. In response, the Spring developers have made it possible to use the Hibernate and JPA APIs directly. This however requires transparent transaction management, as application code no longer assumes the responsibility to obtain and close database resources, and does not support exception translation.


title: Spring Framework

text: Together with Spring's transaction management, its data access framework offers a flexible abstraction for working with data access frameworks. The Spring Framework doesn't offer a common data access API; instead, the full power of the supported APIs is kept intact. The Spring Framework is the only framework available in Java that offers managed data access environments outside of an application server or container.


title: Spring Framework

text: While using Spring for transaction management with Hibernate, the following beans may have to be configured:


title: Spring Framework

text: Spring's transaction management framework brings an abstraction mechanism to the Java platform. Its abstraction is capable of:


title: Spring Framework

text: In comparison, Java Transaction API (JTA) only supports nested transactions and global transactions, and requires an application server (and in some cases also deployment of applications in an application server).


title: Spring Framework

text: The Spring Framework ships a PlatformTransactionManager for a number of transaction management strategies:


title: Spring Framework

text: Next to this abstraction mechanism the framework also provides two ways of adding transaction management to applications:


title: Spring Framework

text: Together with Spring's data access framework – which integrates the transaction management framework – it is possible to set up a transactional system through configuration without having to rely on JTA or EJB. The transactional framework also integrates with messaging and caching engines.


title: Spring Framework

text: The Spring Framework features its own model–view–controller (MVC) web application framework, which was not originally planned. The Spring developers decided to write their own Web framework as a reaction to what they perceived as the poor design of the (then) popular Jakarta Struts Web framework, as well as deficiencies in other available frameworks. In particular, they felt there was insufficient separation between the presentation and request handling layers, and between the request handling layer and the model.


title: Spring Framework

text: Like Struts, Spring MVC is a request-based framework. The framework defines strategy interfaces for all of the responsibilities that must be handled by a modern request-based framework. The goal of each interface is to be simple and clear so that it's easy for Spring MVC users to write their own implementations, if they so choose. MVC paves the way for cleaner front end code. All interfaces are tightly coupled to the Servlet API. This tight coupling to the Servlet API is seen by some as a failure on the part of the Spring developers to offer a high-level abstraction for Web-based applications . However, this coupling makes sure that the features of the Servlet API remain available to developers while also offering a high abstraction framework to ease working with it.


title: Spring Framework

text: The DispatcherServlet class is the front controller of the framework and is responsible for delegating control to the various interfaces during the execution phases of an HTTP request.


title: Spring Framework

text: Each strategy interface above has an important responsibility in the overall framework. The abstractions offered by these interfaces are powerful, so to allow for a set of variations in their implementations, Spring MVC ships with implementations of all these interfaces and together offers a feature set on top of the Servlet API. However, developers and vendors are free to write other implementations. Spring MVC uses the Java codice_7 interface as a data-oriented abstraction for the Model where keys are expected to be string values.


title: Spring Framework

text: The ease of testing the implementations of these interfaces seems one important advantage of the high level of abstraction offered by Spring MVC. DispatcherServlet is tightly coupled to the Spring inversion of control container for configuring the web layers of applications. However, web applications can use other parts of the Spring Framework—including the container—and choose not to use Spring MVC.


title: Spring Framework

text: When a user clicks a link or submits a form in their web-browser, the request goes to Spring DispatcherServlet. DispatcherServlet is a front-controller in spring MVC. It consults one or more handler mappings. DispatcherServlet chooses an appropriate controller and forwards the request to it. The Controller processes the particular request and generates a result. It is known as Model. This information needs to be formatted in html or any front-end technology like JSP. This is the View of an application. All of the information is in the MODEL And VIEW object. When the controller is not coupled to a particular view, DispatcherServlet finds the actual JSP with the help of ViewResolver.


title: Spring Framework

text: Spring's Remote Access framework is an abstraction for working with various RPC (remote procedure call)-based technologies available on the Java platform both for client connectivity and marshalling objects on servers. The most important feature offered by this framework is to ease configuration and usage of these technologies as much as possible by combining inversion of control and AOP.


title: Spring Framework

text: The framework also provides fault-recovery (automatic reconnection after connection failure) and some optimizations for client-side use of EJB remote stateless session beans.


title: Spring Framework

text: Apache CXF provides integration with the Spring Framework for RPC-style exporting of objects on the server side.


title: Spring Framework

text: Both client and server setup for all RPC-style protocols and products supported by the Spring Remote access framework (except for the Apache Axis support) is configured in the Spring Core container.


title: Spring Framework

text: There is alternative open-source implementation (Cluster4Spring) of a remoting subsystem included into Spring Framework that is intended to support various schemes of remoting (1-1, 1-many, dynamic services discovering)...


title: Spring Framework

text: Spring Boot Extension is Spring's convention-over-configuration solution for creating stand-alone, production-grade Spring-based Applications that you can "just run". It is preconfigured with the Spring team's "opinionated view" of the best configuration and use of the Spring platform and third-party libraries so you can get started with minimum fuss. Most Spring Boot applications need very little Spring configuration.


title: Spring Framework

text: Spring Roo is a community project which provides an alternative, code-generation based approach at using convention-over-configuration to rapidly build applications in Java. It currently supports Spring Framework, Spring Security and Spring Web Flow. Roo differs from other rapid application development frameworks by focusing on:


title: Spring Framework

text: Spring Batch is a framework for batch processing that provides reusable functions that are essential in processing large volumes of records, including:


title: Spring Framework

text: It also provides more advanced technical services and features that will enable extremely high-volume and high performance batch jobs through optimizations and partitioning techniques.


title: Spring Framework

text: Spring Batch executes a series of jobs; a job consists of many steps and each step consists of a READ-PROCESS-WRITE task or single operation task (tasklet).


title: Spring Framework

text: The "READ-PROCESS-WRITE" process consists of these steps: "read" data from a resource (comma-separated values (CSV), XML, or database), "process" it, then "write" it to other resources (CSV, XML, or database). For example, a step may read data from a CSV file, process it, and write it into the database. Spring Batch provides many classes to read/write CSV, XML, and database.


title: Spring Framework

text: For a "single" operation task (tasklet), it means doing a single task only, like clean up the resources before or after a step is started or completed.


title: Spring Framework

text: Spring Integration is a framework for Enterprise application integration that provides reusable functions essential to messaging or event-driven architectures.


title: Spring Framework

text: As any other piece of software, Spring can have some vulnerabilities. One of them (CVE-2022-22965) was named "Spring4Shell", similar to Log4Shell.


title: Kevin Abstract

text: Clifford Ian Simpson (born July 16, 1996), known by his stage name Kevin Abstract, is an American rapper, singer, and songwriter, known for his role as a founding member of Brockhampton. He released his debut album, "MTV1987", in 2014 to critical acclaim, and received attention from a number of major music blogs and magazine publications. His second album, "", was released in November 2016, and his third, "Arizona Baby", was released in April 2019.


title: Kevin Abstract

text: Abstract was born in Corpus Christi, Texas. Abstract never met his father and was not close with his mother, not even knowing what her profession was. As Abstract began to realize his sexuality, he isolated himself from his family, feeling ashamed. Many speculate that this is one of the reasons that he ran away from home. He has stated that his family members are "extremely religious" Mormons. Abstract began producing music at 11 and ran away from home at 15, staying at a friend's house for a year before moving to Georgia to live with his sister.


title: Kevin Abstract

text: At the beginning of 2014, Abstract began working on his debut album with his in-house record producer, Romil. On April 1, 2014, he released the record's first single, entitled "Save". The second single from the album, "Drugs", was released on May 6, 2014, with the music video following around a month later. The album was released on July 15, 2014, and was met with positive reviews from a number of music blogs, such as "Billboard", "Complex", "Spin" "Pigeons & Planes", and "2DopeBoyz".


title: Kevin Abstract

text: After the release of "MTV1987," Abstract began working on the music video for the song "Hell/Heroina," using more than $3,000 accrued from fans through a Kickstarter campaign. The crowdfunded project was directed by Tyler Mitchell and finally released on November 4, 2014. Abstract also did a 24-hour live stream on November 1, leading up to the video release, where viewers watched both himself and his computer screen as the audience listened to him talk, observed him interact with him on Twitter, and watched movies together. As of November 2018, it has been removed from most major download and streaming services.


title: Kevin Abstract

text: On January 15, 2015, Abstract informed fans via his Twitter page that his second record was to be titled "Death of a Supermodel" and that it would be released later in the year. However, this album was later discarded. Abstract has announced that he is now working on a different album, "They Shoot Horses," a part of the Death of a Supermodel trilogy.


title: Kevin Abstract

text: On May 30, Abstract and other BROCKHAMPTON members, bearface., Romil Hemnani & Henock Sileshi released a side project EP titled "MEMORIAL DAY" under new personas and the "NOWIFIII" name due to the 2015 Texas floods making them lose their Wi-Fi.


title: Kevin Abstract

text: On June 23, Abstract released a video for "Save", directed by Ian Gilner, Henock Sileshi, & Franklin Mendez. In November, the first single from "They Shoot Horses", "Echo" was released, along with a music video directed by Tyler Mitchell.


title: Kevin Abstract

text: In March 2016, Abstract joined alternative band The Neighbourhood on a week-long tour through England, opening up shows in Portsmouth, Birmingham, Manchester, and London. The final show of the tour was live streamed via the Periscope app, in which he also teased his new album "They Shoot Horses", expected to be released in 2016. He also provided confirmation that his next single would be called "Empty".


title: Kevin Abstract

text: In April, Abstract announced that he would be going on tour with The Neighbourhood again, but this time in the US, during May and June. Abstract exclusively performed new songs from his upcoming album.


title: Kevin Abstract

text: At the end of June, Abstract announced that he had changed the title of his upcoming album to "" and reassured fans that it would still be coming later that year.


title: Kevin Abstract

text: Abstract, along with fellow members of Brockhampton, appeared in the Viceland television series "American Boyband", which premiered on June 8, 2017. The series followed Abstract on his first headlining tour across North America, while also capturing moments of other Brockhampton members still at home in South Central, Los Angeles.


title: Kevin Abstract

text: Abstract is currently managed by longtime manager & business partner Anish Ochani and Christian & Kelly Clancy of 4 Strikes.


title: Kevin Abstract

text: Near the end of 2014, AliveSinceForever disbanded. Out of that project, the musical group Brockhampton was formed by Abstract and others he met on the Kanye West fan forum KanyeToThe.


title: Kevin Abstract

text: In January 2015, Brockhampton's debut single "Bet I" was released. The video for the song was released on March 25, 2015, and was directed by fellow Brockhampton members HK Covers and Franklin Mendez.


title: Kevin Abstract

text: On June 16, Brockhampton released a second single "Hero". At the end of June, it was announced that Brockhampton had won VFiles Loud, an online talent contest aiming to discover the best up-and-coming collectives. Brockhampton was given the opportunity to premiere a professionally directed music video for their third single on MTV, as well as having it released through the independent recording label Fool's Gold Records. The single, "Dirt", was premiered through Apple's Beats 1 Radio and was released on iTunes a few days after.


title: Kevin Abstract

text: On March 30, Brockhampton released their first collective mixtape: "All-American Trash". On April 22, they also released a documentary showcasing the making of the project.


title: Kevin Abstract

text: In 2017, Brockhampton released two albums ("Saturation" and "Saturation II") in the summer of 2017, both to widespread critical acclaim. Three days before the release of Saturation II, Abstract announced via Twitter that a third album titled "Saturation III" would also be released, marking Brockhampton's third full studio album of the calendar year. "Saturation III" was released December 15, which also received critical acclaim. Although it was stated by the group that "Saturation III" would be their final studio album, Brockhampton announced that their fourth studio album, "Team Effort", was expected to be released in 2018. However, "Team Effort" was delayed indefinitely until 2018 following the group's decision to create another album, "Puppy", to be released in its place, only for it to be delayed following the sexual assault allegations on fellow Brockhampton member Ameer Vann.


title: Kevin Abstract

text: On September 21, 2018, Brockhampton released their fourth studio album, "Iridescence", recorded at Abbey Road Studios in 10 days. They also released merchandise to promote both the upcoming album and their upcoming tour, named "I'll be there". On August 23, 2019, their fifth studio album, "Ginger", was released to an overall positive reception.


title: Kevin Abstract

text: In June 2018, Abstract added a picture with the text "ambfII" to his Instagram story, with "ambfII" presumably standing for American Boyfriend II. Later that year, in October, he tweeted the words "american boyfriend", seemingly teasing something. On March 19, 2019, Abstract tweeted a photo, which appears to be the cover of a new album or a single. He also changed his profile picture and his header image. In early April, he expressed in a series of now deleted tweets that once he released as much music as he can in 2019, he would like to retire and focus on filmmaking. Throughout the following weeks, Abstract released more teasers for his upcoming third studio album, "Arizona Baby". With the album to be released in three separate parts, Abstract released a new single titled "Big Wheels" on April 9, 2019, with the first part of "Arizona Baby" releasing just two days later on April 11, along with a music video for "Georgia". On the same day, Abstract announced the second part to the "Arizona Baby" album, "Ghettobaby", released April 18, with a music video for "Baby Boy". Finally, the full album was released on April 25, alongside a music video for the song "Peach".


title: Kevin Abstract

text: On January 18, 2021, Abstract teased a song titled "It's Alright". He later teased another song called "Sierra Nights" on February 6, 2021. He would go on to preview the tracks in full in an Instagram stream, and played snippets of 3 other songs on February 23, 2021.


title: Kevin Abstract

text: On May 16, 2021, Abstract posted snippets of 2 songs, "Tucker" and "Seven Days a Week", the latter being worked on with Brockhampton member HK. On May 22, he shared a snippet for "4Sure". On May 24, Abstract posted a picture of him and a text saying "1978". He teased the track "Everything" the following day. A different version of "Everything", with pitched up vocals and drums, was teased on June 4, 2021.


title: Kevin Abstract

text: On July 16, 2021, Abstract released a single titled, "Slugger", featuring $NOT and slowthai. On August 18, 2021, he released the single, "Sierra Nights", alongside Ryan Beatty.


title: Kevin Abstract

text: In 2021, Abstract started the clothing brand Video Store Apparel (VSA) with fellow Brockhampton member Romil Hemnani. Stylist Nick Holiday is a frequent collaborator.


title: Kevin Abstract

text: Abstract said his influences for "MTV1987" were Frank Ocean, Justin Timberlake, and Kid Cudi. Abstract has described Kanye West, Pink Floyd, Radiohead, Childish Gambino, Outkast, Lana Del Rey and Tyler, the Creator as influences on his music, with Tyler's group, Odd Future, being a large point of reference and inspiration for Brockhampton.


title: Kevin Abstract

text: Abstract came out as gay in 2016 and his records often mention his sexuality. He has stated he will rap about being gay as long as he can imagine a fan in need of a voice. As of 2022, Abstract is dating Brockhampton collaborator and stylist Nick Holiday.


title: Billy Redden

text: Billy Redden (born 1956) is an American actor, best known for his role as a backwoods mountain boy in the 1972 film "Deliverance". He played Lonnie, a banjo-playing teenager in north Georgia, who played the noted "Dueling Banjos" with Drew Ballinger (Ronny Cox).


title: Billy Redden

text: At the age of fifteen, he was discovered by Lynn Stalmaster, who was scouting for the movie "Deliverance". Stalmaster recommended Redden to director John Boorman—though Redden was not an albino child, as Boorman had requested—and Redden was cast.


title: Billy Redden

text: He portrayed a banjo-playing "local" in the film's famous "dueling banjos" scene. Boorman felt that Redden's skinny frame, large head, and almond-shaped eyes made him the natural choice to play the part of an "inbred from the back woods." Because Redden could not play the banjo, he wore a special shirt that allowed a real banjo player to hide behind him. The scene was then shot with carefully chosen camera angles to conceal the player, whose arms were slipped around Redden's waist to play the tune. The hidden banjo player was shown playing in the bar-fingered "clawhammer" style, while the banjo heard on the soundtrack was played in three-finger "Earl Scruggs" style, using finger picks.


title: Billy Redden

text: After "Deliverance", Redden was cast in Lamberto Bava's 1984 film "Blastfighter". The film was recorded in and around Clayton, Georgia, and many people recall it as a mixture of "Deliverance" and "First Blood".


title: Billy Redden

text: Redden next appeared in Tim Burton's 2003 film "Big Fish". Burton was intent on getting Redden, as he wanted him to play the role of a banjo-playing "welcomer" in the utopian town of Spectre. Burton located Redden in Clayton, where he was part-owner of the Cookie Jar Café, and also worked as a cook and dishwasher.


title: Billy Redden

text: In 2004, Redden made a guest appearance on "Blue Collar TV," playing a car repairman named Ray in a "Redneck Dictionary" skit. He represented the word "raisin bread" (as in "Ray's inbred"). He played a banjo in the skit.


title: Billy Redden

text: In 2012, 40 years after the release of "Deliverance", Redden was interviewed in association with a documentary, "The Deliverance of Rabun County" (2012). It explored the feelings of people in Rabun County four decades later about the 1972 film. Redden said that though "Deliverance" was the best thing that happened to him, he never saw much money from the movie:


title: Billy Redden

text: Noting some locals objected to the stereotypes in the movie, Redden said that the people in Rabun County were good people:


title: Arkham Knight

text: The Arkham Knight is an alias used by two supervillains appearing in DC Comics media. Both characters are depicted as enemies of the superhero Batman. The original version was created to serve as the titular villain of Rocksteady Studios' 2015 video game "", the fourth main installment in the "" series. He first appeared in the debut issue of the prequel comic book of the same name in March 2015.


title: Arkham Knight

text: The Arkham Knight is introduced as the mysterious leader of a vast militia of mercenaries who harbors a deep-rooted grudge against Batman. He allies with the Scarecrow and provides a military presence in the evacuated Gotham City. Towards the end of the game's main story, the Arkham Knight is revealed to be Jason Todd, the former and second Robin adapted from the mainstream Batman mythos. In the game's continuity, Todd was thought to have been killed years earlier by the Joker, but was actually tortured and driven insane in Arkham Asylum.


title: Arkham Knight

text: The Arkham Knight persona was later adapted into the mainstream DC Universe in "Detective Comics" #1000 in March 2019. This version is a wholly original character named Astrid Arkham. Raised within Arkham Asylum by its inmates, Astrid grew to sympathize with Gotham City's criminals and becomes the Arkham Knight to seek revenge against Batman for her mother's death.


title: Arkham Knight

text: "Batman: Arkham Knight" introduced the Arkham Knight, a new villain created specifically for the game by Rocksteady Studios, comic-book writer Geoff Johns and comic artist Jim Lee. Troy Baker provided the character's voice in the game, which was released in June 2015.


title: Arkham Knight

text: According to game director Sefton Hill, "[Rocksteady] wanted to introduce someone who could really challenge Batman to go head to head with him in lots of different ways." When asked if the Arkham Knight was an entirely new character or simply new to the "Batman: Arkham" series, marketing producer Dax Ginn responded: "Completely original. Batman has not encountered him before, so this is a completely original design and role that the Arkham Knight brings." Ginn described the opportunity to create an original character in the "Batman" universe as "terrifying", but the developers at the studio relished the chance to make a mark on the "Batman" property that would last beyond the games themselves.


title: Arkham Knight

text: Lead character artist Albert Feliu has stated that the Arkham Knight's design reflects his role in the game as well as his knowledge of Batman's tactics and fighting style. The Arkham Knight wears a high-tech, militarized version of the Batsuit with short antennas that resemble bat ears to mock Batman. The "A" logo of the Arkham Asylum facility is worn as an emblem on his chest. His angular chest plate acts as a means of deflecting the batclaw; his utility belt, in contrast to Batman's, is low-slung; and his gauntlets, boots and armor are influenced by the lightweight design of a fighter aircraft: "highly resistant, unreflective and totally intimidating". The Arkham Knight's holographic helmet conceals his identity with a robotic voice synthesizer, giving the impression of a ghostly figure, and his visor provides him with a heads-up display to monitor his militia forces. His suit has a distinct camouflage pattern of "dark greys interspersed with dashes of red [that] enable him to remain concealed between the gloomy shadows and garish neons of Gotham's alleyways and rooftops".


title: Arkham Knight

text: To commemorate the eightieth anniversary of the "Batman" mythos in 2019, DC Comics debuted a new iteration of the Arkham Knight in "Detective Comics" #1000. Taking place within the mainstream DC Universe, separate from the continuity of the "Batman: Arkham" games, this version of the character was created by Peter J. Tomasi and Doug Mahnke.


title: Arkham Knight

text: In "Batman: Arkham Knight", the Arkham Knight forms an alliance with the Scarecrow to unite all of Gotham City's criminals in an attempt to finally destroy Batman. On Halloween night, Scarecrow forces the civilian evacuation of Gotham with his new strain of fear toxin, allowing the Arkham Knight's militia to take control of the city. The Arkham Knight first encounters Batman at Ace Chemicals, where Scarecrow prepares to cover the Eastern Seaboard with fear gas. While Batman works to inhibit the blast radius, the Arkham Knight kidnaps Barbara Gordon and holds her hostage. The Arkham Knight shoots and subdues Batman before helping Scarecrow extract and activate the "Cloudburst", a mass dispersal device for the fear toxin. Batman uses the Batmobile to destroy the Cloudburst and pursues the Arkham Knight to the militia's headquarters. When Batman attempts to rescue a captured Commissioner Gordon, the Arkham Knight reveals himself as Jason Todd, the former Robin who was tortured and seemingly murdered by the Joker but was actually left traumatized. The Arkham Knight is defeated and vanishes after refusing Batman's offer to help him recover.


title: Arkham Knight

text: Flashbacks throughout the game reveal that during his time as Robin, Jason was captured by the Joker, who faked Jason's death and held him in an abandoned wing of Arkham Asylum for over a year to break his sanity. Jason grew to despise Batman upon learning that he had been replaced and abandoned. The prequel comic book "Batman: Arkham Knight" and the 6-issue miniseries "Batman: Arkham Knight Genesis" explore how Jason, after escaping from the asylum, planned his revenge against Batman as depicted in the game. With the help of the assassin Deathstroke, Jason spent years assembling and training his militia in Venezuela as the Arkham Knight.


title: Arkham Knight

text: In the mainstream DC Universe, the Arkham Knight is the founder of the Knights of the Sun, a cult of Arkham Asylum inmates devoted to ridding Gotham City of Batman. The Arkham Knight is eventually revealed to be Astrid Arkham, the daughter of doctors Jeremiah Arkham, the nephew of the asylum's founder Amadeus Arkham; and Ingrid Karlsson, a kind-hearted woman well liked by even the most dangerous patients.


title: Arkham Knight

text: Astrid was born during a riot at the asylum, in the course of which Ingrid was killed by a batarang thrown by an inmate. After being delivered safely with the help of the Joker, Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, Clayface, and Solomon Grundy, Astrid was raised and homeschooled by Jeremiah in the asylum. She befriended the incarcerated supervillains and would sit outside the Joker's cell to read fairy tales with him, growing to idolize the knights in these stories. Astrid developed a grudge against Batman and saw him as a demon that tormented her friends. This grudge turned into hatred when she uncovered video tapes of Ingrid being struck by a batarang. Believing that Batman had murdered her mother, Astrid trained to become a skilled fighter and, inspired by the knights in her bedtime stories, rechristened herself as the Arkham Knight to seek revenge against Batman.


title: Arkham Knight

text: Following the release of "Batman: Arkham Knight", the Arkham Knight (Jason Todd) was added as a playable character in the mobile version of the video game "".


title: Arkham Knight

text: The reveal of the Arkham Knight's identity in "Batman: Arkham Knight" was met with a mixed reception from critics, who took issue with Rocksteady's marketing of the Arkham Knight as an original character, as the moniker was original but the character in the role was not.


title: Arkham Knight

text: Dan Stapleton of "IGN" felt the problem was that the marketing for the character indicated it was a "big mystery" to his identity, but any "moderately knowledgeable Batman fan could reasonably" deduce the identity: "We all already knew who the Arkham Knight was; we were just hoping it wasn't true because we wanted the original story we'd been promised." Stapleton added, "when the Arkham Knight was unmasked, I felt deceived – not in the good “Ah, you got me!” way, like when you’re fooled by the characters or an unreliable narrator a la Verbal Kent [sic], but in the bad way, where I’d been duped to by the storytellers themselves." Paul Tassi of "Forbes" criticized Rocksteady for promising a new character and insisting the identity "would shock and amaze us all" when it turned out to essentially be "a renamed and recostumed version of a character that has already existed for years." Pete Haas of Cinemablend wrote: "The issue is that Todd fits too well. The developers could have done more to make the Arkham Knight's identity a secret. They could have tried to throw us off by teasing other characters that could be Arkham Knight. Or they could have just downplayed the similarities between Arkham Knight's costume and Red Hood's, or Batman and Arkham Knight's. Or he could've used a voice modulator that made him sound less like a twenty-something American. If you think Jason Todd is the Arkham Knight before you start playing the game, the game does nothing to challenge that assumption. That's an issue."


title: Arkham Knight

text: Other outlets, including "Game Informer", praised Todd's reveal, calling it "satisfying" and "the mother of all twists". VideoGamer.com also gave a positive response to the "who is it?" nature surrounding the Knight throughout the game.


title: Arkham Knight

text: "Gamesradar" also took note that the torture scenes and Red Hood DLC made it easier to predict the twist. "Honestly, in the torture scenes, I'm certain that everyone who predicted Jason Todd before the game came out went, "Yeah, it's definitely him," in that moment. The pre-order DLC featuring Todd's Red Hood persona was arguably a clue, too (or, looking at it from another side, a brave bluff)."


title: Michael Landon Jr.

text: Michael Landon Jr. (born Michael Graham Landon on June 20, 1964) is an American actor, director, writer, and producer.


title: Michael Landon Jr.

text: Landon Jr. is the son of actor Michael Landon and his second wife, Marjorie Lynn Noe. He is the brother of Christopher B. Landon, Leslie Landon, Shawna Landon, and the half-brother of Cheryl Lynn Landon (from his mother's first marriage) and Jennifer Landon (from his father's third marriage) and Sean Landon (from his father's third marriage). His paternal grandfather was Jewish, whereas his paternal grandmother was Catholic, although his father was raised Jewish.


title: Michael Landon Jr.

text: He married actress Sharee Gregory in December 1987. They have three children: daughters Ashley and Brittany and son Austin. Sharee Gregory is the older sister of former child actress Natalie Gregory.


title: Vermiculite

text: Vermiculite is a hydrous phyllosilicate mineral which undergoes significant expansion when heated. Exfoliation occurs when the mineral is heated sufficiently, and commercial furnaces can routinely produce this effect. Vermiculite forms by the weathering or hydrothermal alteration of biotite or phlogopite.


title: Vermiculite

text: Large commercial vermiculite mines currently exist in the United States, Russia, South Africa, China, and Brazil.


title: Vermiculite

text: Vermiculite was first described in 1824 for an occurrence in Millbury, Massachusetts. Its name is from Latin , "to breed worms", for the manner in which it exfoliates when heated.


title: Vermiculite

text: It typically occurs as an alteration product at the contact between felsic and mafic or ultramafic rocks such as pyroxenites and dunites. It also occurs in carbonatites and metamorphosed magnesium-rich limestone. Associated mineral phases include: corundum, apatite, serpentine, and talc. It occurs interlayered with chlorite, biotite and phlogopite.


title: Vermiculite

text: Vermiculite is a 2:1 clay, meaning it has two tetrahedral sheets for every one octahedral sheet. It is a limited-expansion clay with a medium shrink–swell capacity. Vermiculite has a high cation-exchange capacity (CEC) at 100–150 meq/100 g. Vermiculite clays are weathered micas in which the potassium ions between the molecular sheets are replaced by magnesium and iron ions.


title: Vermiculite

text: This process involves mixing exfoliated vermiculite with inorganic bonding agents such as sodium silicate, cement (specific quantities), and other compounds, such as those containing potassium, to produce an 'earth damp' mixture. This material is then hydraulically pressed into shape in a mold and then heat cured at temperatures up to 180 °C for up to 24 hours, depending upon the thickness of the moulded part. Such parts can withstand service temperatures of up to 1150 °C and are often used in the aluminium smelting industry as back-up insulation behind the carbon cathode in the pot cells which contain the molten mixture of cryolite and alumina. The moulded shapes and boards are used in:


title: Vermiculite

text: Exfoliated vermiculite is added to a calcium silicate slurry. This is then dewatered by pressing or by using one of the Fourdriner/Magnani/Hatschek processes to form a flat board which is then heat cured under pressure (typically 10–15 bar) for periods of up to 24 hours.


title: Vermiculite

text: Finer grades of exfoliated vermiculite are being used in brake linings primarily for the automotive market. The properties of vermiculite that make it an appropriate choice for use in brake linings include its thermal resistance, ease of addition to other raw materials to achieve a homogeneous mix, and its shape and surface characteristics.


title: Vermiculite

text: Exfoliated vermiculite (typically the finer grades) can be added at site to Portland cement and other aggregates, rheological aids, and water to produce roof and floor concrete screeds which are lightweight and insulating. In many cases, vermiculite-based roof screeds are used in conjunction with other insulation materials, such as polystyrene board, to form a total roofing system. A bituminous binder can also be used with exfoliated vermiculite to produce a dry, lightweight roof screed which has the advantages of low thermal conductivity, low moisture content, and ease of placement (by pouring from the bag and then tamping).


title: Vermiculite

text: Exfoliated vermiculite is combined with other materials such as peat or composted pine bark to produce soilless growing medium for the professional horticulturalist and for the home gardener. These mixes promote faster root growth and give quick anchorage to young roots. The mixture helps retain air, plant food, and moisture, releasing them as the plant requires them. These mixes were pioneered by Boodley and Sheldrake. Exfoliated vermiculite is also used as a growing medium for hydroponics.


title: Vermiculite

text: Vermiculite, alone or mixed with soil or peat, is used to germinate seeds; very little watering is required. When vermiculite is used alone, seedlings should be fed with a weak fertilizer solution when the first true leaves appear, e.g. with one teaspoon of 5-10-5 soluble fertilizer per gallon of water, gradually increased to one tablespoon (1:256 ratio) when transplanting.


title: Vermiculite

text: Pour vermiculite around bulbs placed in container. If clumps are dug, allow to dry for a few hours in the sun and then place in cartons or bushel baskets and cover with vermiculite. The absorptive power of vermiculite acts as a regulator that prevents mildew and moisture fluctuation during the storage period. It will not absorb moisture from the inside of stored tubers, but it does take up free water from the outside, preventing storage rot.


title: Vermiculite

text: Where the native soil is heavy or sticky, gentle mixing of vermiculite as a soil conditioner —up to one-half the volume of the soil—is recommended. This creates air channels and allows the soil mix to breathe. Mixing vermiculite in flower and vegetable gardens or in potted plants will provide the necessary air to maintain vigorous plant growth. Where soils are sandy, mixing of vermiculite into the soil will allow the soil to hold the water and air needed for growth.


title: Vermiculite

text: Exfoliated vermiculite treated with a water repellent is used to fill the pores and cavities of masonry construction and hollow blockwork to enhance fire ratings (e.g. Underwriters Laboratories Wall and Partition designs), thermal insulation, and acoustic performance. Expanded vermiculite has also been used as thermal insulation in the attics and walls of houses and in water heaters, fire safes, stoves, furnaces, and refrigerators.


title: Vermiculite

text: Exfoliated vermiculite can be combined with high alumina (also known as calcium aluminate) cements and other aggregates such as expanded shale, clay, and slate or sodium silicate to produce refractory/insulation concretes and mortars. In the early days of their use, these products were batched at or very close to the place of installation. This continues to be the case in some limited circumstances; however, more and more use is being made of pre-batched, proprietary mixes. Mixes containing vermiculite are used in areas where strength and corrosion/abrasion resistance are of secondary importance, the most important factor being the insulation performance of the in-place refractory lining. These mixes are used in industries including iron/steel, cement, and hydrocarbon processing.


title: Vermiculite

text: Vermiculite dispersions are typically either chemically or physically very finely delaminated vermiculite in a fluid medium. These dispersions can be used to make vermiculite 'paper' sheets by pouring them onto a piece of smooth, low surface-energy plastic, and allowing to dry. The resulting sheet can then be peeled off the plastic. Typical end-uses for vermiculite dispersions include inclusion in high temperature coatings or binders for construction materials, gaskets, specialty papers/textiles, oxidation-resistant coating on carbon based composites, and as barrier coatings for films.


title: Vermiculite

text: Waste treatment: the cation exchange capacity (up to 1,000 milliequivalents per kg) of vermiculite allows it to be used in fluid purification processes for waste water, chemical processing, and the pollution-control of air in mines and gases in industrial processes. In addition to its ion exchange properties, exfoliated vermiculite can retain liquids within the inter-laminar voids of the individual particles, as well as between the particles themselves.


title: Vermiculite

text: In 2014, South Africa, Brazil, the US, and China were the top producers of mined, concentrated and unexfoliated vermiculite, with about 90% world share. South Africa's production is decreasing, while Brazil's is significantly increasing.


title: Vermiculite

text: While some end processors and exfoliators of vermiculite specialize, with proprietary products sold in a wide variety of industries, some have more varied end products, with less stringent technical requirements. Some vermiculite exfoliators blend with lower-cost perlite also. Vermiculite exfoliators have an international trade association called "The Vermiculite Association" to represent the industry's interests and to exchange information.


title: Vermiculite

text: Today spray-applied fireproofing materials use vermiculite, other industrial minerals, and expanded polystyrene, depending upon the exact commercial product. The ingredients for these products all have to meet stringent regulatory requirements, particularly in the US and Europe. In the past, vermiculite from the W. R. Grace mines in Libby, Montana, has been associated with asbestos. Therefore, old spray-applied fireproofing, pre-1991, may contain small quantities of asbestos. In August 2014, the NYSDoH qualified two, more exact, test methods, better designed to identify materials with this potential problem, and assist in safely dealing with any issues associated with its removal. Modern spray applied fireproofing today is made with various light weight aggregates that does not contain asbestos and is carefully monitored at all stages of mining and production to ensure this is the case.


title: Vermiculite

text: Although not all vermiculite contains asbestos, some products were made with vermiculite that contained asbestos until the early 1990s. Vermiculite mines throughout the world are now regularly tested for it and are supposed to sell products that contain no asbestos. The former vermiculite mine in Libby, Montana, did have tremolite asbestos as well as winchite and richterite (both fibrous amphiboles)—in fact, it was formed underground through essentially the same geologic processes as the contaminants.


title: Vermiculite

text: Pure vermiculite does not contain asbestos and is non-toxic. Impure vermiculite may contain, apart from asbestos, also minor diopside or remnants of the precursor minerals biotite or phlogopite.


title: Vermiculite

text: The largest and oldest vermiculite mine in the United States was started in the 1920s, at Libby, Montana, and the vermiculite was sold under the commercial name Zonolite. The Zonolite brand and the mine were acquired by the W. R. Grace and Company in 1963. Mining operations at the Libby site stopped in 1990 in response to asbestos contamination. While in operation, the Libby mine may have produced 80% of the world's supply of vermiculite.