QUES: How can you describe your location? You might use a familiar system. You might say, 'I live at 1234 Main Street, Springfield, Ohio.' You could also say, 'I live right behind the Elementary School.' This method uses the school as a point of reference. Another example is, I am at the corner of Maple Street and Main Street. Both streets may be a good reference for anyone living in your town. Scientists must be able to pinpoint a feature they are studying. Scientists use a special system to describe locations. They use latitude and longitude as a reference. Lines of latitude and longitude form a grid. You may have used a grid system while doing graphing. This grid is centered on a reference point. Zero latitude is the equator. Lines of latitude run east to west. They divide the Earth from North to South. Lines of longitude run from north to south. They divide the Earth from East to West. Zero longitude runs through Greenwich, England. You may have heard the term, Greenwich Mean Time, or GMT. The system of latitude and longitude works well for objects that do not move.
Do you have any questions?
MY QUESTION: What does GMT stand for and how it is determined?

QUES: (CNN) -- As Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited the U.N. General Assembly in New York last month, the spotlight was once again on Iran. And true to form, the Iranian president made his fair share of provocative statements for the Western media. But while Ahmadinejad's mercurial rants captured our media's attention, back in Iran a coordinated strategy against the women's movement continued. On the eve of Ahmadinejad's arrival to New York, Shiva Nazar Ahari, a prominent young female defender of human rights, received a heavy sentence of six years in prison on charges including the vague crime of "waging war against God" -- a convenient catch-all offense for anyone who criticizes the regime and its human rights record. There's no denying it -- Iran's women have had a bad year. Nazar Ahari joins a steadily increasing number of other women's rights activists who are in prison for no greater crime than their attempt to fight for the rights of the women. Hengameh Shahidi, Alieh Eghdam Doust, Bahareh Hedayat and Mahdiyeh Golrou have all been sent to Tehran's notorious Evin Prison on trumped-up charges related to their activism. And while Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, arguably the most internationally recognized Iranian women's rights activist, remains unable to safely return to her country, the government is targeting those affiliated with her for arrest and imprisonment, including her lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh and her former aide Jinous Sobhani. Since the 2009 disputed elections and associated government crackdown on the overall reform movement, the government has increasingly targeted women activists. The reasons behind this go well beyond the misogynist nature of Iran's religious leadership. Rather, it is more part of a deliberate and calculated strategy of the Iranian authorities to strike at the heart of the regime's greatest vulnerability -- internal legitimacy with its own people. See more CNN.com opinion articles Iran's government recognizes and fears the broader power of the women activists who have been on the front line of reform in Iran for more than a decade. One can roughly draw an analogy between the women's movement in Iran to movements of religious groups in Burma or Tibet, or the labor "solidarity" movements in the former Eastern bloc and associated labor-Roman Catholic solidarity in Poland -- all advocating initially for the freedoms of a specific group but which provoked government fears for their transformative power to promote broader human rights progress. While the outside world occasionally reacts to the most egregious manifestations of Iran's repression of women -- such as the international condemnation associated with Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, an Iranian widow sentenced to stoning on charges of alleged adultery -- these events are often portrayed simply as a consequence of the regime's archaic viewpoint about gender.
Do you have any questions?
MY QUESTION: What are the names of some of the women in prison charged for being women's activists?

QUES: Bin Laden and his aides did not need a very large sum to finance their planned attack on America. The 9/11 plotters eventually spent somewhere between $400,000 and $500,000 to plan and conduct their attack. Consistent with the importance of the project, al Qaeda funded the plotters. KSM provided his operatives with nearly all the money they needed to travel to the United States, train, and live. The plotters' tradecraft was not especially sophisticated, but it was good enough. They moved, stored, and spent their money in ordinary ways, easily defeating the detection mechanisms in place at the time. The origin of the funds remains unknown, although we have a general idea of how al Qaeda financed itself during the period leading up to 9/11. General Financing As we explained in chapter 2, Bin Laden did not fund al Qaeda through a personal fortune and a network of businesses in Sudan. Instead, al Qaeda relied primarily on a fund-raising network developed over time. The CIA now estimates that it cost al Qaeda about $30 million per year to sustain its activities before 9/11 and that this money was raised almost entirely through donations. For many years, the United States thought Bin Laden financed al Qaeda's expenses through a vast personal inheritance. Bin Laden purportedly inherited approximately $300 million when his father died, and was rumored to have had access to these funds to wage jihad while in Sudan and Afghanistan and to secure his leadership position in al Qaeda. In early 2000, the U.S. government discovered a different reality: roughly from 1970 through 1994, Bin Laden received about $1 million per year-a significant sum, to be sure, but not a $300 million fortune that could be used to fund jihad. Then, as part of a Saudi government crackdown early in the 1990s, the Bin Laden family was forced to find a buyer for Usama's share of the family company in 1994. The Saudi government subsequently froze the proceeds of the sale. This action had the effect of divesting Bin Laden of what otherwise might indeed have been a large fortune. Nor were Bin Laden's assets in Sudan a source of money for al Qaeda. When Bin Laden lived in Sudan from 1991 to 1996, he owned a number of businesses and other assets.
Do you have any questions?
MY QUESTION: How much money did al Qaeda use to fund the 9/11 attacks?

QUES: Earthquakes seemed to outline a special feature of earth's crust. Earthquakes let scientists know where the crust was moving. This led to the discovery that the Earths crust was broken up into regions, or plates. Earthquakes happen most often along these plate boundaries. This was evidence that continents can move. The movements of the plates are called plate tectonics. The Earths crust is divided into plates. There are about a dozen large plates and several small ones. Each plate is named for the continent or ocean basin it contains. Scientists know he plates are in motion. They now know the direction and speed of this motion . Plates dont move very fast. They move only a few centimeters a year. This is about the same rate fingernails grow. So you might wonder, what could cause this motion? What supplies the energy to cause this change?
Do you have any questions?
MY QUESTION:
Why is it likely that scientists only learned about plate boundaries from studying earthquakes?