Blood diamonds is a term used for a diamond mined in a war zone and sold to finance an insurgency, an invading army's war efforts, or a warlord's activity. The term is used to highlight the negative consequences of the diamond trade in certain areas, or to label an individual diamond as having come from such an area. Diamonds mined during the recent civil wars in Angola, Ivory Coast, Sierra Leone, and other nations have been given the label. The term conflict resource refers to analogous situations involving other natural resources.
Alternative medicine is the most rapidly growing field in health care
today. Through the increasing awareness of alternative health care, the
general public is looking for credible practitioners to guide them in
their quest for optimal health. Nutrition is one of the key factors to
attaining optimal health and well-being. The Institute of Holistic
Nutrition (IHN) provides professional nutrition training to those who
seek a new and dynamic career in the alternative health care field.
Holistic Health is a system of health care that accentuates personal
responsibility and a cooperative relationship between practitioner and
client. Its aim is to unify the physical, nutritional, environmental,
emotional and spiritual components of the client’s life. These, together
with correct lifestyle changes, promote healing and well-being. IHN’s
program offers a diversified curriculum encompassing the essential
disciplines of holistic nutrition. Graduates of the diploma program are
recognized as leading nutritional practitioners capable of educating,
and advising clients on how to address and correct specific nutritional
imbalances and weaknesses.
IHN’s curriculum is current, informative, and innovative in nature.
Students receive hands-on exposure to alternative nutrition, through
workshops, guest speakers, industry day trips, and co-operative
placements. The co-operative placement program enables students to
develop associations with potential employers, while providing valuable
work experience. An essential ingredient in the holistic philosophy is
lifestyle modification which IHN’s program addresses through hands-on
holistic cooking classes. Students are given opportunities to develop
professional skills including writing, presentation and public speaking
to enhance communication tactics and counseling abilities. For
individuals currently in the health field, IHN also provides courses
which will keep them abreast on current and future trends in
complementary health care, and add great value to one’s existing
professional practice. IHN’s advisory committee provides direction with
leading edge information and news about current developments in
community-based practices. The committee includes professionals in the
natural health care field.
Antarctica is Earth's southernmost continent, containing the geographic South Pole. It is situated in the Antarctic region of the Southern Hemisphere, almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle, and is surrounded by the Southern Ocean. At 14.0 million square kilometres (5.4 million square miles), it is the fifth-largest continent in area after Asia, Africa, North America, and South America. For comparison, Antarctica is nearly twice the size of Australia. About 98% of Antarctica is covered by ice that averages 1.9 kilometres (1.2 mi) in thickness which extends to all but the northernmost reaches of the Antarctic Peninsula.
Antarctica, on average, is the coldest, driest, and windiest continent, and has the highest average elevation of all the continents. Antarctica is considered a desert, with annual precipitation of only 200 mm (8 in) along the coast and far less inland. The temperature in Antarctica has reached −89 °C (−129 °F). There are no permanent human residents, but anywhere from 1,000 to 5,000 people reside throughout the year at the research stations scattered across the continent. Only cold-adapted organisms survive, including many types of algae, bacteria, fungi, plants, protista, and certain animals, such as mites, nematodes, penguins, seals and tardigrades. Vegetation, where it occurs, is tundra.
Although myths and speculation about a Terra Australis ("Southern Land") date back to antiquity, the Russian expedition of Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and Mikhail Lazarev on Vostok and Mirny first sighted a continental ice shelf in 1820. The continent, however, remained largely neglected for the rest of the 19th century because of its hostile environment, lack of resources, and isolation.
Antarctica is a de facto condominium, governed by parties to the Antarctic Treaty System that have consulting status. The Antarctic Treaty was signed in 1959 by 12 countries; to date, 50 countries have signed the treaty. The treaty prohibits military activities and mineral mining, prohibits nuclear explosions and nuclear waste disposal, supports scientific research, and protects the continent's ecozone. Ongoing experiments are conducted by more than 4,000 scientists from many nations.
Twenty-five years after the World Wide Web was created, the issue of
surveillance has become the greatest controversy of its existence. With
many concerned that governments and corporations can monitor people's
every move, this programme meets hackers and scientists who are using
technology to fight back, as well as the law enforcement officers who
believe it's leading to opportunities for risk-free crimes.
The Hacker Wars brings you to the
front lines of the battle over the fate of the Internet,
freedom and privacy. The Hacker Wars talks about the anarchic
troll provocateur Andrew Aurenheimer, prodigy hacker hero Jeremy
Hammond, and incendiary watchdog journalist Barrett Brown three larger
than life characters whose separate quests to expose the secrets of
empire hurled them into a fateful collision course with shadowy
corporations, the FBI, and ultimate betrayal by one of their own.
Featuring
interviews with Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Glenn Greenwald,
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Chris Hedges, NSA whistleblower Thomas
Drake, The Hacker Wars traces the steps that led from the Internet’s
murkiest corners to the heavy shadow of censorship and a century’s worth
of prison time.
Internationally acclaimed Diractor Vivien
Lesnik Weisman melds her distinctively subversively bent style with the
real life stories of the cyberpunk vanguards who blur the line between
hacking and activism. Locked in a murky conflict against world
governments, these so-called hacktivists are waging a life-or-death
struggle for the freedom of public information and the defense of
privacy under siege.
Nanotech is the manipulation of matter on an atomic, molecular scale. The earliest, widespread description of
nanotech referred to the particular technological goal of
precisely manipulating atoms and molecules for fabrication of macroscale
products. A more
generalized description of nanotechnology was subsequently established
by the National Nanotechnology Initiative, which defines nanotechnology
as the manipulation of matter with at least one dimension sized from 1
to 100 nanometers. The definition reflects the fact that quantum
mechanical effects are important at this quantum-realm scale, and so this
definition shifted from a particular technological goal to a research
category inclusive of all types of research. It is therefore common to see the plural form
"nanotechnologies" as well as "nanoscale technologies" to refer to the
broad range of research and applications whose common trait is size.
Because of the variety of potential applications governments have invested billions of dollars in
nanotechnology research. Through its National Nanotechnology Initiative,
the USA has invested 3.7 billion dollars. The European Union has
invested 1.2 billion and Japan 750 million dollars.
The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is by far the most important source of energy for life on Earth. The Sun is a nearly perfect spherical ball of hot plasma, with internal convective motion that generates a magnetic field via a dynamo process. The diameter of the Sun is about 109 times that of Earth, and it has a mass about 330,000 times that of Earth, accounting for about 99.86% of the total mass of the Solar System. Chemically, about three quarters of the Sun's mass consists of hydrogen, whereas the rest is mostly helium, and much smaller quantities of heavier elements, including oxygen, carbon, neon and iron.
The Sun is a G-type main-sequence star (G2V) based on spectral class and it is informally designated as a yellow dwarf. It formed approximately 4.567 billion years ago from the gravitational collapse of matter within a region of a large molecular cloud. Most of this matter gathered in the center, whereas the rest flattened into an orbiting disk that became the Solar System. The central mass became increasingly hot and dense, eventually initiating thermonuclear fusion in its core. It is thought that almost all stars form by this process. The Sun is roughly middle age and has not changed dramatically for four billion years, and will remain fairly stable for four billion more. However, after hydrogen fusion in its core has stopped, the Sun will undergo severe changes and become a red giant. It is calculated that the Sun will become sufficiently large to engulf the current orbits of Mercury, Venus, and possibly Earth.
Vikings (from Old Norse víkingr) were Germanic Norse seafarers, speaking the Old Norse language, who raided and traded from their Scandinavian homelands across wide areas of northern and central Europe, as well as European Russia, during the late 8th to late 11th centuries. The term is also commonly extended in modern English and other vernaculars to the inhabitants of Viking home communities during what has become known as the Viking Age. This period of Norse military, mercantile and demographic expansion constitutes an important element in the early medieval history of Scandinavia, the British Isles, France, Kievan Rus' and Sicily.
Facilitated by advanced seafaring skills, and characterised by the longship, Viking activities at times also extended into the Mediterranean littoral, North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. Following extended phases of (primarily sea- or river-borne) exploration, expansion and settlement, Viking (Norse) communities and polities were established in diverse areas of north-western Europe, European Russia, the North Atlantic islands and as far as the north-eastern coast of North America. This period of expansion witnessed the wider dissemination of Norse culture, while simultaneously introducing strong foreign cultural influences into Scandinavia itself, with profound developmental implications in both directions.
Popular, modern conceptions of the Vikings the term frequently applied casually to their modern descendants and the inhabitants of modern Scandinavia often strongly differ from the complex picture that emerges from archaeology and historical sources. A romanticised picture of Vikings as noble savages began to emerge in the 18th century; this developed and became widely propagated during the 19th-century Viking revival. Received views of the Vikings as alternatively violent, piratical heathens or as intrepid adventurers owe much to conflicting varieties of the modern Viking myth that had taken shape by the early 20th century. Current popular representations of the Vikings are typically based on cultural clichés and stereotypes, complicating modern appreciation of the Viking legacy.
