A toll road (also called a turnpike, toll highway, or express toll route) is a road for which vehicles must pay a fee to use, called a "toll". Toll roads are there in part to control the number of people using it. They may be built to allow some users to travel faster and avoid traffic congestion, speeding up traffic. In the past, tolls were collected to give income to governments or landowners. Today, tolls can be considered a form of tax which pays for the cost of road construction and maintenance that are not charged on those who do not use that road.
There are many types of toll roads. Tolls might be charged to use a bridge, tunnel, or highway. On some roads, the amount of money you pay depends on how far along the road you go, and/or whether you are driving a car, motorcycle, bus, or truck. On other roads, you pay the same amount no matter how far you go or what you drive.
There are also many ways tolls can be collected. In the first toll roads, you had to stop at a booth along the road and pay the toll to a person, called a "collector". Depending on the road, you might have to do so when you get on, when you get off, or both. Because many vehicles may be waiting to pay the toll, the area around "toll plazas", which are a bunch of booths blocking the whole road, can be crowded. Recently, there are roads that have "electronic toll collection", which makes use of computer chips and RFID technology to identify drivers and charge their tolls on their bank accounts.
Tolls might be collected by vehicles traveling on one or more lanes of a road which is otherwise free to use. These lanes are often called "high occupancy toll lanes" because in most cases, vehicles with more than one person do not have to pay to use the lane. These lanes are there to encourage carpooling. If there are fewer cars on the road, more people can get to where they want to go without getting stuck in traffic.
All roads have to be paid for somehow, and so are never truly "free". Normally, road construction costs are paid for by the taxes on gasoline, diesel, or other fuel. Users of toll roads still pay these taxes "and" the tolls for using this particular road or lane.
Tolls are mentioned in Greek mythology where Charon the ferryman charged a toll to carry the dead across the rivers Acheron and Styx to Hades. If the soul paid a toll, Charon ferried it across the river. If not, it wandered between death and life for eternity.
Toll roads are at least 2700 years old, as tolls had to be paid by travellers using the Susa–Babylon highway under the regime of Ashurbanipal, in the seventh century BC.
Aristotle and Pliny refer to tolls in Arabia and other parts of Asia. In India, before the 4th century BC, the Arthasastra notes the use of tolls. Germanic tribes charged tolls to travellers across mountain passes.
Investor's bonds may be sold to those who are paying for the road to be built, and it is expected that they will be paid back over time by charging tolls. Once the bonds are paid off, the road is usually given back to the government agency that owns the land it was built on and had allowed the road to be built.
The need to build better roads than the existing ones was a reason for turnpikes. Turnpike trusts were established in England and Wales from about 1706. Turnpike trusts were set up by individual Acts of Parliament, with powers to collect road tolls Britain. At the peak, in the 1830s, over 1,000 trusts had about of turnpike road in England and Wales. They had almost 8,000 toll-gates. The trusts were responsible for keeping and improving most main roads in England and Wales. This helped distribute agriculture and industrial goods and kept prices low. The Turnpike trusts were gradually abolished starting in the 1870s. Most trusts improved existing roads, but some new ones, usually only short stretches of road, were also built. Thomas Telford's Holyhead road (now the A5 road) is exceptional: it was a long new road, built in the early 19th century with many toll booths along its length.
Annie Besant
Annie Besant (1 October 1847, London – 20 September 1933, India) was a British woman who became one of the leaders of the Indian freedom struggle. In 1885, Annie Besant joined the Fabian Society and later became a member of 'Marxist Social Democratic Federation'. She joined the Theosophical Society, a religious movement founded in 1875 and based on ideas of karma and reincarnation. As a leader of the Society, Besant helped to spread Theosophical beliefs around the world. She established the 'Olkot Panjama School' in 1894. She was the founder of Central Hindu College. Later this college developed as the Hindu University of Benarus. Annie Besant started the India Home Rule movement in 1916 and became its president. In 1917 she became a leading member of the Indian National Congress.
Halophile
Halophiles are organisms that need salt in their environment to live. Halophiles live in evaporation ponds or salt lakes such as Great Salt Lake, Owens Lake, or Dead Sea. The name "halophile" comes from Greek for "salt-loving".
Most halophiles are archaeans, but some bacteria and eukaryotes are also halophiles, such as the alga "Dunaliella salina".
Most halophilic and salt-eating animals use energy to remove salt from their cytoplasm. Normally, organisms living around a lot of salt would lose water and die because of osmosis. Water inside the organism would move from inside the cell to its outside environment. This is because there is always movement of water to reach a state where the concentrations of salt are the same on both sides of the cell membrane.
To survive, the cytoplasm of halophiles must be isotonic with its environment.
To get to this state, halophiles use two different methods. In the first (mainly used by bacteria, some archaea, yeasts, algae and fungi), organic compounds are stored in the cytoplasm. These compounds help the organism survive the stress of osmosis. The most commonly used solutes for this process are neutral and include amino acids and sugars. Advantages to this method are that organisms can live in a wider range of salt concentrations. Also, if proteins are not exposed to high salt levels, they do not have to adapt to high salt levels. It requires the organism to use much more energy then the adaption below.
The second, less common adaptation, is the selective intake of potassium (K) ions into the cytoplasm. In exchange, the organism pumps sodium (Na) ions out with the help of the sodium-potassium pump. Ions of sodium may be used instead of potassium, but potassium is the most common. This adaptation is only used by one order of bacteria and one family of Archaea. An advantage to this method is that it uses much less energy than the adaption above. The main disadvantage to this adaption is that all of the machinery inside the cell (enzymes, structural proteins, etc.) must be adapted to high levels of non-organic ions, and high salt levels. This is much more demanding than the adaptation described above.
Most halophilic organisms only use one of the two methods, but a few halophiles can use both.
Halophiles are categorized by the levels of salt at which they grow best. Halophiles can either be categorized as slight halophiles, moderate halophiles, or extreme halophiles. Slight halophiles grow best in concentrations of salt around 2% to 5%. An example of a slight halophile is "Erythrobacter flavus". Slight halophiles live in mud on the ocean floor, in seawater, and in garden soil.
Moderate halophiles grow best in concentrations of salt around 5% to 20%. Examples of moderate halophiles are organisms in the genera "Desulfovibrio", "Desulfocella", "Desulfohalobium", and "Desulfotomaculum". Moderate halophiles live in marine salterns, saline lakes, in matter at the bottom of the sea, and in oil brine fields.