Learning About Starfish

Learning About Starfish Starfish are fascinating creatures. With their   bumpy, five-armed bodies, its easy to see how they got their  name, but did you know that starfish arent really fish at all? Scientists dont call these ocean-dwelling  creatures starfish. They call them sea stars because they arent fish. They dont have gills, scales, or backbones like fish do. Instead, starfish are invertebrate  marine organisms tbhat  are part of the family known as  echinoderms. One feature that all echinoderms have in common is that their body parts are arranged symmetrically around a center point. For starfish, those body  parts are their arms. Each arm has suckers that help starfish, who dont swim, move along and capture prey. Most of the 2,000 species of starfish have the five arms that inspired their name, but some have as many as 40 arms! Starfish can regrow an arm if they lose one. Thats because their vital organs are located in their arms. In fact, as long as an arm has part of the starfishs central disc, it can regenerate an entire starfish. At the end of each of a starfishs five to forty arms is  an eye that helps them locate food. Starfish eat things like clams, snails, and small fish. Their stomachs are located on the underside of their central body part. Did you know that a starfishs stomach can come out of its body to envelop its prey? Another striking fact about starfish is that they dont have brains or blood! Instead of blood, they have a water vascular system that helps them breathe, move, and expel waste. Instead of a brain, they have a complex system of light - and temperature-sensitive nerves. Starfish  live only in saltwater habitats but are found in all Earths oceans. They vary in sized based on the species but are usually between 4 and 11 inches in diameter and can weigh up to 11 pounds. The lifespan of a starfish also varies by species, but many live up to 35 years. They can be found in a variety of colors such as brown, red, purple, yellow, or pink. If you are fortunate enough to find a starfish in a  tide pool or the ocean, you can safely pick it  up. Just be very careful not to harm the starfish and make sure to return it to its home. Learning About Starfish To learn more about sea stars, try some of these excellent books: Starfish by Edith Thacher Hurd is a Lets-Read-and-Find-Out About story about starfish  and how they live in the deep blue sea. One Shining Starfish by Lori Flying Fish is a colorful counting book featuring starfish and other ocean-dwelling creatures.   Star of the Sea: A Day in the Life of a Starfish by  Janet Halfmann is a beautifully-illustrated book that weaves facts about starfish into a delightfully captivating tale. Seashells, Crabs and Sea Stars: Take-Along Guide by Christiane Kump Tibbitts introduces a variety of marine life, including starfish. It includes tips for identifying several marine-dwelling creatures and features fun activities to try. Spiny Sea Star: A Tale of Seeing Stars by Suzanne Tate provides easily-accessible facts about starfish with adorable illustrations. Sea Star Wishes: Poems from the Coast by Eric Ode is a collection of  ocean-themed poems, including those about starfish. Memorize a starfish poem or two as you study sea stars. Resources and Activities for Learning About Starfish Spend some time researching and learning about starfish using your library, the Internet, or local resources. Try some of these ideas: Learn more about how starfish see with the eyes at the end of each of their arms.Research starfish anatomy. Learn how they eat, breathe, and move.Visit an aquarium or a fish store to see live starfish up close.If you live near a beach, look for starfish in the tide pools.Make a diorama featuring starfish, their habitat, and their prey.Create an ABC book about starfish.Do some research to find out what creatures other than starfish are members of the  echinoderm family.Learn about the dangers,  such as predators and pollution, that starfish face. Starfish, or sea stars, are enchanting creatures who play an important role in their environment. Have fun learning more about them! Updated by Kris Bales

Prejudice is a Toxic Type of Thinking essays

Prejudice is a Toxic Type of Thinking essays What is the extent of prejudice? How far will it go until the entire world realizes that it is wrong? Prejudice continues to infect and destroy the dreams and minds of many people. A human being is not born with prejudice. Prejudice is taught to children at an early age to make certain that their fathers beliefs continue. By the time a child reaches adulthood, he or she might have the same hatred of their fathers. Prejudice has gone through many extremities. In a book called Black Boy, a black woman is thrown out of a clothing store beaten and bloody for not paying her tab. In the movie American History X a boy is taught at an early age to hate anyone who isnt a white protestant. Stereotypes are used today to discriminate against others. A restaurant owner with stereotypical views charged a black man a 50% tip without his consent. When the owner was confronted by the customer the owner replied saying black men dont tip well. Without discrimination, putdowns, stereotyping , and name calling, this world would be a better place. Instead we have prejudice. Prejudice is wicked and evil. Prejudice is a spurious occurrence that continues to confine those who deserve more, and infects the world with its hatred. Prejudice promotes violence and anger towards others who are different. Richard Wrights Black Boy writes, They got out and half dragged and half kicked the woman into the store. White people passed and looked on without expression. A white policeman watched from the corner twirling his nightstick but he made no move to help. Throughout the early 1900s people tolerated much more hate than they do now. The reason the lady in the quote was beaten was because she had not paid her bill. What is really distasteful is that people walked by without noticing the woman simply because she was black. Even a policeman observed this incident and didn ...

Software Development Life Cycle Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Software Development Life Cycle - Essay Example SDLC involves a process that involves phases that some scholars divide into five while some others divide it into seven. The most common elements of SDLC include the system requirement study, which some scholars divide into system investigation and system analysis; designing; development, which some scholars indicate as programming; testing and maintenance. However, some scholars include the element of evolution of the software as a different stage from maintenance. The requirement study element involves the situation in which the organization that needs the software analyzes the needs that it has to perform certain activities efficiently, different from what they had initially. The stage of the SDLC involve the owner organization assessing its capability to use the software it is about to develop by assessing whether it has the financial ability and the software or hardware necessary to utilize the product they intend to make (Peters, 2008). The SDLC element of design involves the p roduction of a blueprint of what the client demanded and which meet the initial product description. This stage of development of software produces a prototype that the developer can work on to increase the qualities and the other aspects. The stage of development or programming is the one at which the developer names conventions in the prototype codes it so that it can be able to meet the requirement of their clients. The element of testing is the stage at which the developer carries out a process of testing the software he or she made, which acts as a verification of the working of the application as the client demanded (Peters, 2008). The stage of maintenance is one in which after the client has approved the software and has started using it, he goes on to determine the parts of the software that may need changes. The process of evolution is where the organization implements changes to the original software because of changes in the policies that existed during the designing time (Peters, 2008). The SDLC requires the involvement of the different specialists who include the Chief Information Officer of the organization who plans and makes budgetary allocation to the project of developing software. The Contracting Officer is the person who administers or terminates a contract as a representative of the organization and Contracting Officer’s Technical Representative who manages the technical aspects of the contract assists him or her. The SDLC requires the Information Technology Investment Board that manages and controls the capital planning and investment in the things related to information in the organization. The Information Systems Security Program Manager is an important role player in the SDLC project because he or she introduces an appropriate, structured methodology to help determine, assess and reduce the cases of information insecurity in the software that is made (Langer, 2012). Information System Security Officer is the individual in the or ganization that plays the role of ensuring the security of information transmitted through the software on the long term. The Program Manager is the individual who oversees all the project of acquisition of the software and ensures that, in its life cycle, it fulfills the requirements that it was designed to

City National Research Proposal Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

City National - Research Proposal Example By means of its banking offices in West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio, the Company is able to offer credit, deposit, investment advisory as well as insurance products and services to its customers. City Holding Company is the parent company of City National Bank of West Virginia. The company in line with this also works with City Insurance Professionals, an insurance agency that provides a full array of insurance products and services. Assessing the position of company necessitates the discussion as well as examination of the firm’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities as well as threats. In this light we take into consideration that the strengths and weaknesses of the firm would be based on the conditions of the firm internally while the firm’s opportunities and threats would be based on the placement of the firm in its external environment as well as the dealings it is engaged with. One of the key opportunities that are evident for the firm is that when it comes to answering to local demand, the retail division of the firm was the first in their markets to establish and launch an innovative checking selection for individuals who happened to have their past challenges when it comes to running their accounts. Bounce Back Checking is for individuals who have been rejected and taken the opportunity to open a checking account. This particular option is intended for those individuals who are seeking to a fresh start. The company assists these individuals by providing them the necessary guidelines when it comes to learning responsible banking practices together with the aim of moving them to a traditional checking account. Apart from this, the company was also able to generate its own opportunity when it instigated the Community Hero Checking. This particular program honors current and retired military personnel, firefighters, police officers, medical professionals and teachers by offering them special account

Time Travel Essay Example for Free

Time Travel Essay The urge to hug a departed loved one again or prevent atrocities are among the compelling reasons that keep the notion of time travel alive in the minds of many. While the idea makes for great fiction, some scientists now say traveling to the past is impossible. There are a handful of scenarios that theorists have suggested for how one might travel to the past, said Brian Greene, author of the bestseller, â€Å"The Elegant Universe† and a physicist at Columbia University. â€Å"And almost all of them, if you look at them closely, brush up right at the edge of physics as we understand it. Most of us think that almost all of them can be ruled out. † The fourth dimension In physics, time is described as a dimension much like length, width, and height. When you travel from your house to the grocery store, you’re traveling through a direction in space, making headway in all the spatial dimensions—length, width and height. But you’re also traveling forward in time, the fourth dimension. â€Å"Space and time are tangled together in a sort of a four-dimensional fabric called space-time,† said Charles Liu, an astrophysicist with the City University of New York, College of Staten Island and co-author of the book â€Å"One Universe: At Home In The Cosmos. † Space-time, Liu explains, can be thought of as a piece of spandex with four dimensions. â€Å"When something that has mass—you and I, an object, a planet, or any star—sits in that piece of four-dimensional spandex, it causes it to create a dimple,† he said. â€Å"That dimple is a manifestation of space-time bending to accommodate this mass. † The bending of space-time causes objects to move on a curved path and that curvature of space is what we know as gravity. Mathematically one can go backwards or forwards in the three spatial dimensions. But time doesn’t share this multi-directional freedom. â€Å"In this four-dimensional space-time, you’re only able to move forward in time,† Liu told LiveScience. * Video: Can You Time Travel? Tunneling to the past A handful of proposals exist for time travel. The most developed of these approaches involves a wormhole—a hypothetical tunnel connecting two regions of space-time. The regions bridged could be two completely different universes or two parts of one universe. Matter can travel through either mouth of the wormhole to reach a destination on the other side. â€Å"Wormholes are the future, wormholes are the past,† said Michio Kaku, author of â€Å"Hyperspace† and â€Å"Parallel Worlds† and a physicist at the City University of New York. â€Å"But we have to be very careful. The gasoline necessary to energize a time machine is far beyond anything that we can assemble with today’s technology. † To punch a hole into the fabric of space-time, Kaku explained, would require the energy of a star or negative energy, an exotic entity with an energy of less than nothing. Greene, an expert on string theory—which views matter in a minimum of 10 dimensions and tries to bridge the gap between particle physics and natures fundamental forces, questioned this scenario. â€Å"Many people who study the subject doubt that that approach has any chance of working,† Greene said in an interview . â€Å"But the basic idea if you’re very, very optimistic is that if you fiddle with the wormhole openings, you can make it not only a shortcut from a point in space to another point in space, but a shortcut from one moment in time to another moment in time. † Cosmic strings Another popular theory for potential time travelers involves something called cosmic strings—narrow tubes of energy stretched across the entire length of the ever-expanding universe. These skinny regions, leftover from the early cosmos, are predicted to contain huge amounts of mass and therefore could warp the space-time around them. Cosmic strings are either infinite or they’re in loops, with no ends, said J. Richard Gott, author of â€Å"Time Travel in Einsteins Universe† and an astrophysicist at Princeton University. â€Å"So they are either like spaghetti or SpaghettiO’s. † The approach of two such strings parallel to each other, said Gott, will bend space-time so vigorously and in such a particular configuration that might make time travel possible, in theory. â€Å"This is a project that a super civilization might attempt,† Gott told LiveScience. â€Å"It’s far beyond what we can do. We’re a civilization that’s not even controlling the energy resources of our planet. † Impossible, for now Mathematically, you can certainly say something is traveling to the past, Liu said. â€Å"But it is not possible for you and me to travel backward in time,† he said. | However, some scientists believe that traveling to the past is, in fact, theoretically possible, though impractical. Maybe if there were a theory of everything, one could solve all of Einstein’s equations through a wormhole, and see whether time travel is really possible, Kaku said. â€Å"But that would require a technology far more advanced than anything we can muster, he said. Don’t expect any young inventor to announce tomorrow in a press release that he or she has invented a time machine in their basement. † For now, the only definitive part of travel in the fourth dimension is that we’re stepping further into the future with each passing moment. So for those hoping to see Earth a million years from now, scientists have good news. â€Å"If you want to know what the Earth is like one million years from now, I’ll tell you how to do that,† said Greene, a consultant for â€Å"Deja Vu,† a recent movie that dealt with time travel. â€Å"Build a spaceship. Go near the speed of light for a length of time—that I could calculate. Come back to Earth, and when you step out of your ship you will have aged perhaps one year while the Earth would have aged one million years. You would have traveled to Earth’s future. † Source 2 Time Slips / Time Travel 0digg 1 comment A time slip is an alleged paranormal phenomenon in which a person, or group of people, travel through time through supernatural (rather than technological) means. As with all paranormal phenomena, the objective reality of such experiences is disputed. One of the best-known, and earliest, examples of a time slip was reported by two English women, Charlotte Anne Moberly (16 September 1846 – 7 May 1937) and Eleanor Jourdain (1863–1924), the principal and vice-principal of St Hugh’s College, Oxford, who believed they slipped back in time in the gardens of the Petit Trianon at Versailles from the summer of 1901 to the period of the French Revolution. On August 10, 1901 Moberly and Jourdain were visiting the Palace of Versailles. They decided to go in search of the Petit Trianon. While walking through the grounds they both were impressed by a feeling of oppressive gloom. They claimed to have encountered, and interacted with, a number of people in old fashioned attire whom they later assumed to have been members of the court of Marie Antoinette and to have seen a figure that may have been Marie Antoinette herself on the day in 1792 when she learned that the mob had stormed the Tuileries Palace. Source 3, 4, 5 . http://www. youtube. com/watch? feature=player_embeddedv=FdWXMD4rOGQ#! http://www. youtube. com/watch? feature=player_embeddedv=rqQV_UzVQks http://www. youtube. com/watch? v=X02WMNoHSm8 Source 6 The Big Question: Is time travel possible, and is there any chance that it will ever take place? By Steve Connor, Science Editor Friday 08 February 2008 Why are we asking this now? Two Russian mathematicians have suggested that the giant atom-smasher being built at the European centre for nuclear research, Cern, near Geneva, could create the conditions where it might be possible to travel backwards or forwards in time. In essence, Irina Arefeva and Igor Volovich believe that the Large Hadron Collider at Cern, which is due to be switched on this year for the first time, might create tiny wormholes in space which could allow some form of limited time travel. If true, this would mark the first time in human history that a time machine has been created. If travelling back in time is possible at all, it should in theory be only possible to travel back to the point when the first time machine was created and so this would mean that time travellers from the future would be able to visit us. As an article in this weeks New Scientist suggests, this year – 2008 – could become year zero for time travel. Is this really a serious proposition? The New Scientist article points out that there are many practical problems and theoretical paradoxes to time travel. Nevertheless, the slim possibility remains that we will see visitors from the future in the next year, says the magazine says, rather provocatively. It has to be said that few scientists accept the idea that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will create the conditions thought to be necessary for time travel. The LHC is designed to probe the mysterious forces that exist at the level of sub-atomic particles, and as such will answer many important questions, such as the true nature of gravity. It is not designed as a time machine. In any case, if the LHC became a time machine by accident, the device would exist only at the sub-atomic level so we are not talking about a machine like Dr Whos Tardis, which is able to carry people forwards and backwards from the future. What do the experts say about the idea of time travel? The theoretical possibility is widely debated, but everyone agrees that the practical problems are so immense that it is, in all likelihood, never going to happen. Brian Cox, a Cern researcher at the University of Manchester, points out that even if the laws of physics do not prohibit time travel, that doesnt mean to say its going to happen, certainly in terms of travelling back in time. Saying that the laws of physics as we know them permit travel into the past is the same as saying that, to paraphrase Bertrand Russell, they permit a teapot to be in orbit around Venus, Dr Cox says. Its possible, but not likely. Time travel into the future is absolutely possible, in fact time passes at a different rate in orbit than it does on the ground, and this has to be taken into consideration in order for satellite navigation systems to work. But time travel into the past, although technically allowed in Einsteins theory, will in the opinion of most physicists be ruled out when, and if, we develop a better understanding of the fundamental laws of physics – and thats what the LHC is all about. Why is the possibility of time travel even considered? It comes down to the general theory of relativity devised by Albert Einstein in 1905. It is the best theory we have so far on the nature of space and time and it was Einstein who first formulated the mathematical equations that related both time and space in the form of an entity called space-time. Those equations and the theory itself do not prohibit the idea of time travel, although there have been many attempts since Einstein to prove that travelling back in time is impossible. Is there anything to support the theory? Lots of science fiction writers have had fun with time travel, going back to H. G. Wells, whose book The Time Machine was published in 1895 – 10 years before Einsteins general theory of relativity. Interestingly, it was another attempt at science fiction that revived the modern interest in time travel. When Carl Sagan, the American astronomer, was writing his 1986 novel Contact, he wanted a semi-plausible way of getting round the problem of not being able to travel faster than the speed of light – which would break a fundamental rule of physics. He needed his characters to travel through vast distances in space, so he asked his cosmologist friend Kip Thorne to come up with a possible way of doing it without travelling faster than light. Thorne suggested that by manipulating black holes it might be possible to create a wormhole through space-time that would allow someone to travel from one part of the Universe to another in an instant. He later realised that this could also in theory be used to travel back in time. It was just a theory of course, and no one has come close to solving the practical problem of manipulating black holes and creating wormholes, but the idea seemed to be sound. It spawned a lot of subsequent interest in wormholes and time travel, hence the latest idea by the two Russian mathematicians. Apart from the practicalities, whats to stop time travel? The biggest theoretical problem is known as the time-travel paradox. If someone travels back in time and does something to prevent their own existence, then how can time travel be possible? The classic example is the time traveller who kills his grandfather before his own father is conceived. Cosmologists, renowned for their imaginative ingenuity, have come up with a way round this paradox. They have suggested that there is not one universe but many – so many that every possible outcome of any event actually takes place. In this multiple universe, or multiverse model, a woman who goes back in time to murder her own granny can get way with it because in the universe next door the granny lives to have the daughter who becomes the murderers mother. Where does this leave the time machine in Geneva? The science writer and physicist John Gribbin, who explains these things better than most, points to a saying in physics: anything that is not forbidden is compulsory. So they expect time machines to exist. The snag is that the kind of accidental time tunnel that could be produced by the LHC in Geneva would be a tiny wormhole far smaller than an atom, so nothing would be able to go through it. So there wont be any visitors from the future turning up in Geneva just yet. Id take it all with a pinch of salt, but it certainly isnt completely crazy. So, not completely crazy, just a bit crazy. So will we one day be able to travel into the future? Yes * There is nothing in the laws of physics to prohibit it, and events in Geneva are pointing the way and could be a first step * In physics, so the saying goes, if nothing is prohibited, it must happen at some point * All we need to do is to work out how to manipulate black holes and wormholes, and away we go No * The practical problems with time travel are too immense to solve, and even if you could, who would want to? * You might travel back in time and kill one of your grandparents by accident. Then where would you be? * If time travel is possible, why are we still waiting to welcome our first visitors from the future? Source 7 Time Travelers By Stephen Wagner, About. com Guide Where and to what date would you go if you could travel through time? Its a question people have long enjoyed contemplating the possibilities are so fraught with wonder and excitement. Would you watch the pyramids of Egypt being build? Join the spectacle of a gladiatorial battle at the Roman Coliseum? Catch a glimpse of real dinosaurs? Or would you prefer to see what the future holds for humankind? Such fantasies have fueled the success of such stories as H. G. Welles The Time Machine, the Back to the Future movies, favorite episodes of Star Trek and countless science fiction novels. And although some scientists think that it might be at least theoretically possible to travel through time, no one (as far as we know) has devised a sure-fire way to make it happen. But thats not to say that people havent reported traveling through time. There are many fascinating anecdotes from those who say they seem to have quite unexpectedly visited if only briefly another time and, sometimes, another place. These events, often called time slippages, seem to occur randomly and spontaneously. Those who experience these events are often bewildered and confused by what they see and hear, and afterward are at a complete loss to explain them. Here are some interesting cases that will keep you wondering: FLIGHT INTO THE FUTURE In 1935, Air Marshal Sir Victor Goddard of the British Royal Air Force had a harrowing experience in his Hawker Hart biplane. Goddard was a Wing Commander at the time and while on a flight from Edinburgh, Scotland to his home base in Andover, England, he decided to fly over an abandoned airfield at Drem, not far from Edinburgh. The useless airfield was overgrown with foliage, the hangars were falling apart and cows grazed where planes were once parked. Goddard then continued his flight to Andover, but encountered a bizarre storm. In the high winds of the storms strange brown-yellow clouds, he lost control of his plane, which began to spiral toward the ground. Narrowly averting a crash, Goddard found that his plane was heading back toward Drem. As he approached the old airfield, the storm suddenly vanished and Goddards plane was now flying in brilliant sunshine. This time, as he flew over the Drem airfield, it looked completely different. The hangars looked like new. There were four airplanes on the ground: three were familiar biplanes, but painted in an unfamiliar yellow; the fourth was a monoplane, which the RAF had none of in 1935. The mechanics were dressed in blue overalls, which Goddard thought odd since all RAF mechanics dressed in brown overalls. Strange, too, that none of the mechanics seemed to notice him fly over. Leaving the area, he again encountered the storm, but managed to make his way back to Andover. It wasnt until 1939 that that the RAF began to paint their planes yellow, enlisted a monoplane of the type that Goddard saw, and the mechanics uniforms were switched to blue. Had Goddard somehow flown four years into the future, then returned to his own time? CAUGHT IN A TEMPORAL VORTEX Dr. Raul Rios Centeno, a medical doctor and an investigator of the paranormal, recounted to author Scott Corrales a story told to him by one of his patients, a 30-year-old woman, who came to him with a serious case of hemiplegia the total paralysis of one side of her body. I was at a campground in the vicinity of Markahuasi, she told him. Markahuasi is the famous stone forest located about 35 miles east of Lima, Peru. I went out exploring late at night with some friends. Oddly enough, we heard the strains of music and noticed a small torch-lit stone cabin. I was able to see people dancing inside, but upon getting closer I felt a sudden sensation of cold which I paid little attention to, and I stuck my head through an open door. It was then that I saw the occupants were clad in 17th century fashion. I tried to enter the room, but one of my girlfriends pulled me out. It was at that moment that half of the womans body became paralyzed. Was it because the womans friend pulled her out of the stone cabin when she was half entered into it? Was half her body caught in some temporal vortex or dimensional doorway? Dr. Centeno reported that an EEG was able to show that the left hemisphere of the brain did not show signs of normal functioning, as well as an abnormal amount of electric waves. (See Dimensions Beyond Our Own for more details on this story. ) Source 8 How Time Travel Works by Kevin Bonsor and Robert Lamb Stuff You Should Know From millennium-skipping Victorians to phone booth-hopping teenagers, the term time travel often summons our most fantastic visions of what it means to move through the fourth dimension. But of course you dont need a time machine or a fancy wormhole to jaunt through the years. As youve probably noticed, were all constantly engaged in the act of time travel. At its most basic level, time is the rate of change in the universe and like it or not, we are constantly undergoing change. We age, the planets move around the sun, and things fall apart. We measure the passage of time in seconds, minutes, hours and years, but this doesnt mean time flows at a constant rate. Just as the water in a river rushes or slows depending on the size of the channel, time flows at different rates in different places. In other words, time is relative. But what causes this fluctuation along our one-way trek from the cradle to the grave? It all comes down to the relationship between time and space. Human beings frolic about in the three spatial dimensions of length, width and depth. Time joins the party as that most crucial fourth dimension. Time cant exist without space, and space cant exist without time. The two exist as one: the space-time continuum. Any event that occurs in the universe has to involve both space and time. In this article, well look at the real-life, everyday methods of time travel in our universe, as well as some of the more far-fetched methods of dancing through the fourth dimension. Source 9 Is Time Travel Possible? Analysis by Robert Lamb Thu Apr 22, 2010 06:14 PM ET Its not glamorous, but its time travel. (Michael Dunning/Photographers Choice/Getty Images) From summer blockbusters to sensational science headlines, modern culture is constantly inundated with tales of time travel. But when you boil down the physics involved, is it possible to travel through time? To answer this question, I tracked down theoretical physicist and cosmologist Paul Davies, author of How to Build a Time Machine. SLIDE SHOW: What are the favored time travel methods as used in science fiction? We are all time travelers The short answer is that time travel into the future is not only possible, its been done, and weve known about it for over a century, says Davies. The reason that the public doesn’t seem to know about it is because the amount of time travel involved is so pitifully small that it doesnt make for a Doctor Who style adventure. A phenomenon called time dilation is the key here. Time passes more slowly the closer you approach the speed of light an unbreakable cosmic speed limit. As such, the hands of a clock in a speeding train would move more slowly than those in a stationary clock. The difference would not be humanly noticeable, but when the train pulled back into the station, the two clocks would be off by billionths of a second. If such a train could attain 99. 999 percent light speed, only 1 year would pass onboard for every 223 years back at the train station. But speed isnt the only factor that affects time. On a much smaller scale, mass also influences time. Time slows down the closer you are to the center of a massive object. Time runs a little bit faster in space than it does down on Earth, Davies says. It runs a little faster on the roof than it does in the basement, and thats a measurable effect. A clock aboard an orbiting satellite experiences time dilation due to both the speed of its orbit and its greater distance from the center of Earths gravity. Both gravity and speed can give you a means of jumping ahead, Davies says. So in principle, if you had enough money, you could get to the year 3000 in as short a time as you like one year, one month, whatever it takes. It is only a question of money and engineering. Forward, not back? Time travel into the future is an established and fundamental aspect of Albert Einsteins theory of relativity. Scientists have tested and retested this in both experimental and practical settings. But what about time travel in the opposite direction? Going back in to the past is a whole different kettle of fish. Davies says. Theres nothing in Einsteins theory, which is the best theory that we have about the nature of time, which precludes it. Theres nothing in even his general theory of relativity, published in 1915, which precludes travel back into the past, but many scientists are deeply uneasy about it because of all the well-known paradoxes that it unleashes. For instance, imagine going back in time and killing your own mother. Then shed never give birth to you, and just how would you have been able to travel back in time to commit matricide in the first place? Wormholes as spacetime shortcuts Davies surmises that, given our current understanding of the nature of time and physics, time travel into the past simply isnt possible. But the universe is full of mysteries, and one of them the hypothetical wormhole might just permit such a journey. This is a little bit like a tunnel or shortcut between two distant points, Davies says, So for example, if I had a wormhole here in my hotel room and I jumped through it I wouldnt come out on Pennsylvania Avenue, Id maybe come out near the other side of the galaxy. Source 10 Scientists have theorized that such a shortcut through time and space could be turned into a time machine. If a worm hole could exist and could be traversable, then it would provide a means of going back in time, Davies says. So it all hinges on whether stable wormholes are a reality or if theres some aspect of physics not relativity, because theres nothing wrong from that point of view but some other aspect of physics might intercede and prevent the wormhole from forming. Thats an open question. World-famous theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking has proposed that wormholes occurring at a quantum level could theoretically provide a foothold for time travel, but University of California at Santa Barbara physicist Andrew Cleland urges caution on that front. Im an experimentalist, and physics is ultimately an experimental science, Cleland says. Any predictions that are made based on mathematics or on philosophical or intellectual speculation have to pass the test of experiment, and I am certainly not aware of any experiment that demonstrated the possibility of traveling backward in time. Cause and effect Cleland also points out that the fundamental principle of causality stands in the way of travel into the past. The entire universe, as we understand it, is beholden to this rule. Something occurs first and the outcome of that occurrence happens afterward, Cleland says, and there has never to my knowledge been an experiment that came out different from that. I am not aware of any experimental tests of quantum mechanics that have shown any violation of causality, in spite of the fact that many experiments could reveal such a violation. Still, in the same way that time dilation isnt flashy enough to seem like time travel into the future, the public often overlooks a very common means of traveling into the past. In a sense, astronomers are always traveling backward in time, but it is in a way that most people are not so excited about, Cleland says. When we measure the cosmic microwave background, were looking back more than 10 billion years in time. Thats how long it took for the light to reach us. A number of questions about time travel remain unanswered. Will time tourists from the future ever show up to help us out? Well just have to wait and see. But if they come here using a wormhole time machine, well have to build one first. After all, you couldnt cross a bridge if only one side had been completed, right? Theoretically, it would take more than 100 years to create a 100-years time difference between the two ends of a wormhole, Davies says, so theres no way that our descendants could come back and tell us were wrong about this.

Cultural Chameleon :: Essays Papers

Cultural Chameleon For me, being late to school meant chasing down taxis at 7:15 am and hurriedly telling the driver, in broken Cantonese, to please hurry. A day of shopping meant searching the Hong Kong market streets for a pair of shoes larger than a size 7 and bargaining for thirty minutes with the shopkeeper to bring the price down to fewer than ten dollars. Lunch with a friend was being the only white girl in a small noodle house tainted by the smell of the ducks and chickens hanging in the window, my voice drowned out by music blaring through Cantonese speakers. Sometime in the five years I had lived in Hong Kong, between speaking a little Cantonese and knowing the downtown streets like the back of my hand, I was promoted from my status as a typical American blonde to a true Hong Kong kid. When I moved away the summer after my sophomore year in high school, I was leaving home and going somewhere completely foreign. Texas. I will always remember the first day of public school. My mom dropped me off at the front of the school, as kids sped by us in their huge SUV’s to viciously snag a parking space. Inside, I was met with a swarm of Abercrombie-clad blondes and brunettes in every hall and at every corner. My thoughts were drowned out by singing of the latest songs on the radio, gossip, and laughter. Seeing as these were people who spoke the same native language as me, who looked the same and sounded the same, you would think that I would finally feel at home and relieved. But I had never felt so foreign in my life. This American culture that my parents called their own, did not at all feel like something that was mine. I was confused by the fact that I felt more at home and at ease in a culture where I stuck out as blatantly different, than in one where I blended in completely. It was this challenge and these feelings that established me as what is commonly referred to as one of the world’s â€Å"Third Culture Kids.† In their book so titled, David C. Pollock and Ruth E. Van Reken describe in detail the concept of what it means to grow up in a culture other than that of your own native culture, and the challenges and emotions that are often met.

Comparing Quality With Quantity Of Education For Development Economics Essay

Education plays a major function in the part of economic development of any state. Education is considered to be really of import as it generates demand for high rates of labour ingestion and labour productiveness. It besides helps in deriving big economic returns through higher productiveness and incomes of the people. Education besides enhances accomplishments and cognition of the work force ( Woodward et al. , 2000 ; OECD, 1994 ; Bloom et al. , 2006 ) . The states with good developed instruction systems besides benefit by increasing the proportion of the working population and promote them to stay in the work force. A good instruction system in a state besides helps to keep competitory place in the planetary economic system and minimizes the impact of unemployment than states that have non invested in such preparation ( World Bank, 1990 ; Economic development indexs, 2007 ) . Education besides helps in accomplishing a higher criterion of life and enhances the accomplishments and cognition of people. It besides contributes and benefits the population from the scientific and technological progresss in the signifier of new merchandises and procedures which may in bend consequence in higher net incomes of people and lead to economic development ( Stevens and Weale, 2003 ) . However, it can non be denied that people need to better and update their accomplishments and cognition to vie in the progressively knowledge based economic system, as a consequence of which it becomes necessary for people to set about both qualitative and quantitative instruction and preparation ( Woodward et al. , 2000 ) . The quality and measure of instruction offered may change from state to state, but instruction is considered to be really of import as it is considered to be a major subscriber of economic growing. Even in Australia, instruction is one of the largest industries which contribute to about 6 per centum of GDP and the sum spent by the politicians and educational curates in Australia is based with the quality of end product. The authorities bursary on instruction during the 90 ‘s was about $ 17.6bn and the outgo made by persons and houses was about $ 4.7bn. Australia ‘s instruction system is besides considered to be of good quality criterion and besides attracts big pupils from different states. ( Becker and Lewis, 1993 ; Burke, 1992 cited in Marginson, 1993 ; Australian authorities, 2008 ) . However, there has been a batch of argument in the literature as to whether the quality of instruction is of import of the measure for a state ‘s economic development. ( Link and Ratledge, 1975 ; Marginson, 1993 ; Woodward et Al, 2000 ; Bloom et al. 2006 ) states that, it is of import for people to hold high quality of instruction as it encourages the population to achieve more instruction which will take to economic development of a state. This is because ; high quality of instruction helps people to develop more accomplishments and cognition and therefore, increases the productiveness of people which in bend has big impact on the net incomes and economic growing. The writers further provinces that, in order to acquire accurate estimations of returns from the quality of instruction, it is of import to mensurate quality which can be done by quantitative indexs i.e. graduation rates or achievement tonss of people. One of the states that illustrate the importance of quality of instruction is Singapore, where the per capita GDP grew at the rate of 6.7 per centum between 1970 ‘s and 1990 ‘s. The chief ground for the addition in the GDP was due to the alterations in the instruction policy. The authorities ‘s policy was focused on upgrading the quality of instruction and increasing the productiveness by bettering the accomplishments of people by using the school larning to existent universe jobs. This policy resulted in increased engagement of work force in the labour market with high cognition and accomplishments and therefore, the quality of instruction contributed into the economic system by bring forthing a cognition driven work force taking to the economic development of the state ( Kozma, 2005 ) . However, ( Cheng and Ghulam, 1997 ; Lee, 2005 ; Barro, 2001 ; Sianesi and Reenen, 2002 ; Dowrick, 2002 ) contradicts this and states that measure of instruction contributes to about 0.44 per centum growing in a state ‘s per capita GDP for every extra twelvemonth of schooling. Measure of instruction helps people attain more old ages of instruction and can gain higher rewards. Achieving more old ages of instruction is besides of import as higher degree of instruction is needed to run into the challenges of altering demands which are originating out of advanced cognition and engineerings. In developed states like Australia, more accents is being laid on the quality of instruction which leads to economic growing as at that place does non look to be much of a relationship between the degrees of instruction attained i.e. measure and economic growing. In such states more importance is given on the quality of instruction. This is because, people who do non possess plenty cognition and experience i.e. quality while go forthing or graduating from high schools and colleges find it hard to run into the demands of the labour market. These people may besides hold low productiveness and net incomes which may in bend have low impact on the economic development ( Pianalto, 2004 ; Bosworth and Collins, 2003 ; Arcaro, 1995 ; Marginson, 1993 and Barr, 2002 ) . However, ( Access Economics, 2005 ; World Bank, 1990 ) contradicts these positions and provinces that at that place seems to be a relationship between achieving higher degrees of instruction and economic growing. This is because, what a population learns may be different from what the employers may demand in the labor market. Achieving a low degree of instruction may besides gain really low returns to persons and to the economic system, while more old ages of instruction i.e. measure consequences in more skilled work force. Such skilled work force, in bend consequences in higher productiveness, higher engagement of people in the work force and higher employment in the state. The work force with more instruction brings a higher degree of accomplishment to the work topographic point. Hence, it increases the productiveness. It increases engagement of people as workers with higher accomplishments degrees are more likely to work. Hence, it increases engagement. Peoples who attain mote ins truction are more likely to be employable and bask lower unemployment rates. The writer further adds that people who do non achieve more degrees of instruction, they are likely to gain lower norm returns as compared to those people who have attained more degrees of instruction. For illustration in Australia, in 1999, people who did non complete twelvemonth 12 earned about 20 per centum less than those who completed. While people who attained university instruction earned about 40 per centum more than those who completed twelvemonth 12 and about earned 75 per centum more than the least educated. Education delivers high wage to Australians Beginning: OECD Net incomes of people by increased degree of instruction Average pay of those who finish school =100 ( Nam et al. , 1994 ; Temple, 2000 ; Muffels, 2008 ) further adds that, people with low old ages of instruction i.e. measure are more likely to acquire a impermanent occupation, peripheral occupation due to the deficiency in the accomplishments and cognition. This can ensue in lower productiveness and lower net incomes of persons. While people who attain high degrees of instruction are more likely to hold a positive consequence on labor market and acquire lasting occupations, nucleus occupations. This is because, though the procedure of instruction takes clip and involves chance cost, nevertheless, the result from the investing in the old ages of schooling can be considered to be certain in a sense that those persons who undertake who attain higher degrees of instruction will be skilled laborers in future which will increase productiveness and lead to economic growing. But ( the economic experts, 1992 ; Link and Ratledge, 1975 ) are of the position that, both quality and measure are of import for economic development as a big proportion of uneducated may ensue in unemployment and people who do non finish their schools do non hold important impact on their net incomes. The people who attain quality of instruction besides better the accomplishments of people and as there is a mismatch between the accomplishments offered by the people and the accomplishments needed by labor markets, there is a demand for people to achieve measure degrees of higher instruction. In order to increase the quality and measure of instruction it is besides of import to account that, who pays for instruction. ( Woodward et al. , 2000 ; Harrison, 1997 ) states that the authorities should bear the cost of instruction because if the authorities wages of instruction so it will better the quality and measure of instruction as more figure of people will be encouraged by the authorities to set about instruction. The sum of subsidy given by the authorities besides may impact the fees that persons pay for acquiring educated and therefore, will increase the demand for instruction. But if the authorities does non pay for instruction, it may impact the quality of instruction and besides may increase inequality in instruction. This is because ; if persons have to pay for instruction so they may see instruction as outgo and non as investing and hence, see a secondary issue which may raise poorness and unemployment in the state, which may restrict the economic growing of the state.

Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down

December 11, 2012 Section 1: Who is the one to delineate fault for a miscommunication and misunderstanding between two cultures? In Anne Fadiman’s novel, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, she begins the novel as an attempt to allocate responsibility for the mistreatment and exacerbation of Lia Lee’s epilepsy. The tension between the Hmong and United States medical culture exemplified the strain in America between a foreign culture dependent on rituals and society’s norm. As the novel progress, Fadiman realizes that neither culture is truly at fault.Lia’s situation stemmed from a clash of cultural beliefs and practices that could have been solved by a respect and empathy of the significance of cross-cultural communication. Throughout the narrative, there were characters that were able to be culturally empathetic while some were unable to appreciate the cultural differences between the two entities and realize the necessity for cooperation and unders tanding. The Hmong have a saying that they repeat at the beginning of every story, â€Å"Hais cuaj txub kaum txub,† which means, â€Å"speak of all kinds of things† (Fadiman 13).These words depict the belief in the Hmong culture that the world is full of things that might not appear related but actually are. This concept relates to the Hmong’s history. Their development as a culture is tainted with inconsiderate counter cultures that restricted their freedom to practice their cultural rituals. This greatly influenced their ability to trust cultures that are not their own. Their general distrust in any culture different from their own can be mainly traced back to the Chinese and Indochinese portion of their saga.Basically, the Hmong have been chased out of any home they have ever had due to their unwillingness to take orders, their affliction to losing and the imperative detail that they would rather flee, fight, or die than surrender. This all boils down to the fact that they are not easily swayed by other culture’s customs. This ethnocentric attitude has greatly attributed to the Hmong culture’s general distrust and distaste for any culture but their own. Lia’s parents, Nao Kao and Foua Lee, and much of the Hmong community were skeptical of trusting the â€Å"white people† in the medical profession and in the community.In fact, Lia’s case became the litmus test for Hmong community and turned out to be a deciding factor as to whether the Hmong community in Merced, California would trust the medical professionals when they found themselves at MCMC in a similar state as Lia. Despite this inherent distrust of any culture dissimilar to their own, the Lee’s were able to trust one CPA worker, Jeanine Hilt, who took the Lee’s case very personally. Jeanine made it her mission to fight the medical industry tyranny on behalf of the Hmong culture and became the only person to ask the Lees their opinion .Because of the language barrier, many medical professionals saw talking to the Lee’s as a lost cause to communicate with, which led the Lees to believe they were being taken advantage of. Jeanine was the only one who thought to ask how the Lees felt about how the doctors were treating Lia and their culture. Because of this openness to communication and genuine interest in their answers, she explained to the hospital how the Lees, and the Hmong culture, felt about Lia’s epilepsy and why they were running into to so many conflicts with the Hmong culture.Jeanine’s open approach allowed her to see what the barrier was between the Lees ad the medical profession. The Lee’s and the Hmong culture considered Lia an anointed one and her â€Å"illness† as a blessing rather than a weakness. In the Hmong culture, people born with epilepsy are believed to be the anointed ones and are destined to a life as a shaman. They call it â€Å"qaug dab peg,† or â €Å"the spirit catches you and you fall down. † People in the medical profession did not understand the concept of spirits and the importance of epilepsy for the Hmong. Jeanine was the only white person who adamantly fought for the rights of the Hmong.She was able to do this by the ability to effectively and cross culturally communicate. A similar problem occurred when the Lees refused to give their daughter her daily medicine regimen. Lia was taken away from her family and put into foster care. Jeanine fought to get Lia back to her family as her epileptic episodes became more frequent and dangerous. After she succeeded, it was Jeanine’s mission to educate the Lees, especially Foua, on the drug regimen and explain to her the importance of the drugs and to understand Nao Kao and Foua’s aversion to medicine.Hilt was the only person that took the time to listen to Foua and her concerns regarding the unnatural substances. And after Lia’s large grand mal seizu re, she was the only one who tackled the problem of how the Hmong family was treating Lia’s developmental delays. Jeanine’s key to success was always keeping the lines of communication open between herself and the Lees and therefore between the Lees and the MCMC. In order to cross culturally communicate, Jeanine focused on a caring approach that was â€Å"culturally empathetic† and used the Lees daughter, May, as her translator.She did this because having another unfamiliar person in the room, especially a translater, would make the Lees uncomfortable and less open to effective communication. Hilt also took the time to get to know the Lees. She knew the names of all their seven surviving children and most importantly never abandoned Lia or her family even in Nao Kao’s darkest moments. As part of the Hmong culture, they are naturally very violent and are not deterred by being outnumbered. Nao Kao threatened a translator that came and told the Child Protect ive Services were taking Lia away.Jeanine understood the aversion to having someone’s child taken away and made sure the threats Nao Kao made didn’t affect the courts decision to let Lia return. Jeanine’s empathy was deepened by two factors. She understood the burden of a chronic illness because she had asthma. She also admired the connection and closeness of the Hmong families. She was deeply connected to this family and to this child so she harassed the government and the hospital until the Lees got what they deserved. This included a pediatric hospital bed for Lia’s last days at home.This led the Lees to hold Jeanine in high esteem and allowed for a trust that was incredibly hard to earn from the Hmong culture. While Jeanine took the time to understand the Hmong culture, Nao Kao, Lia’s father, did little to reciprocate. He greatly appreciated her attempt at being understanding, however he never believed it was his responsibility to do the same. Even then, Foua was usually the most receptive to Jeanine’s triumphs. Historically Hmongs have become the pariahs of society.With this in mind, Nao Kao never really made the effort to be part of a society that he knew went against his beliefs and therefore was rejecting him. It is also prominent in Hmong culture, that the man is the strongest part of the family and the most emotionally disconnected. While the Hmong were fighting the Chinese, they even killed their wives and children so they wouldn’t be emotionally distracted. Nao Kao hyper masculine attitude led him and his wife to be passively obedient. In the book, Fadiman writes â€Å"It was typical or Hmong patients to appear passively obedient – thus protecting their own dignity by concealing their ignorance and their doctor’s dignity by acting deferential – and then, as soon as they left the hospital, to ignore everything to which they had supposedly assented† (Fadiman 68). This is no way to effectively communicate between two cultures. By Nao Kao affirming that he would give the medicine and not at least trying to explain that it is against his belief and/or he does not understand how to give the medicine, he falsely gives the impression to the doctors that Lia will be cared for at home.Not only does not communicate that he will not give the medicine, but he also doesn’t communicate that he has not given the medicine to Lia when the Lees continue to take her to the hospital seizure after seizure. While the Hmongs believed being epileptic was a sort of blessing, they also understood the repercussions and knew the disease was at least semi-dangerous. That is the reason the Lees continued to take Lia to MCMC over and over again, despite their hatred for the medical culture and the inability to effectively communicate. However Nao Kao Lee was most definitely stuck in his ways.Fadiman explains a observation by Francois Marie Savina as to his first impressions to the Hmong in 1924. Savina, a missionary, stated â€Å"ethnic durability can be attributed to six factors: religion; love of liberty; traditional costumes; refusal to marry outside their race; life in the cold, dry mountainous areas; and the toughening effects of war† (Fadiman 208). The Lee family did little the acculturate themselves into the United States culture and came here to merely escape prosecution. When the Lees came to America, their relatives had to show them how the country worked. They relied greatly on their children.After Seventeen years of living here they still speak only Hmong and practice only Hmong traditions. The Hmong culture is famously stuck in its ways and it was no different for Nao Kao. The mixture between his role in his culture as well as the culture itself lends itself to the inability to communicate between the Lee family and the MCMC medical staff. The first thing that would allow two cultures, such as the Hmong and the United States medical culture, to effectively communicate is knowing what their core values, core distinction, and some key elements to their culture in regards to value dimensions.The Hmong’s value dimensions tend to fall on one extreme, while America falls on the other side of the spectrum. For example, in the Identity value dimension, the Hmong are highly collectivist, which means their core value is group harmony and their core distinction is whether you’re in group/out group. However, the United States population is based on individualist side of the identity spectrum. This means they believe in individual freedom and the core distinction is whether its me/others (Hofstede Pederson Hofstede 94-97).This has a large impact in how two cultures interact with each other because while the United States will believe that the Hmong should do whatever it takes to protect themselves while the Hmong believe they should maintain the peace with the gods or else they will be punished which focusâ⠂¬â„¢ on group harmony. The virtue value dimension also has a strong effect on the differences between these cultures. The Hmong are considered extreme long-term orientation, which values the long-term benefits. The US medical culture is more oriented on today’s effects, otherwise known as extreme short-term orientation (Hofstede Pederson Hofstede 109-112).This shows why the Hmong are so superstitious because they are worried about the futures of their children and even their grandchildren. The medical industry is not superstitious and therefore believes in saving the life that needs saving now and not later. They do not discriminate on between now and later. A lot of lessons can be learned from how Jeanine was able to effectively communicate between the Hmong and US medical cultures. First of all, it is important to be open to new ways of communication between cultures and to not only find similarities, but also understand the differences between cultures.The Hmong culture a nd the Medical culture in the United States seem on opposite ends of the cultural spectrum. In that brief period of Lia’s seizures being decreased and her seemingly getting better, the Lees understood that they had to give Lia her medicine regularly and the hospital understood why the Lees were hesitant about giving their child too many unnatural substances. When the two entities understood each other’s culture and cultural differences, Lia’s health improved and they were able to understand each other beyond the most basic level.This is called being culturally empathetic. Lia’s illness was a test for the two cultures. It was a situation that forced a broken system to recognize its faults and demonstrate how it needs to be fixed. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter who worsened Lia’s illness because placing blame won’t help either culture understand each other. By the end of the text, as Fadiman is reflecting on the case, she writ es â€Å"I do not know if Lia would be able to walk and talk today had she been treated by Arthur Kleinman instead of by Neil Ernst and Peggy Philp.However, I have come to believe that her life was ruined not by septic shock or noncompliant parents but by cross-cultural misunderstanding† (Fadiman 262). The MCMC has learned multiple lessons from Lia’s epilepsy. They learned to be culturally conscious, they removed the organ donor box from the hospital waiver and posted details about Lia’s case so her illness won’t be mistreated ever again. The key to communicating effectively is to realize that a culture is different from yours and value their judgments just as much as you value your own.Jeanine was able to do it, hopefully Nao Kao will one day do it as well as every doctor in the medical profession, and especially the doctors that are in heavily populated minority areas. Bibliography 1. Fadiman, Anne. The spirit catches you and you fall down: a Hmong chil d, her American doctors, and the collision of two cultures. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1997. 2. Hofstede, Gert Jan, Paul Pedersen, and Geert H. Hofstede. Exploring culture. Yarmouth, Me. : Intercultural Press, 2002 Section II: Throughout my life, I have always been a person who loved traveling.I will always love traveling and someday, I hope to have a job where traveling is a requirement. When I travel, I hoped to come as close to emersion as possible in the time span I’m there. I believe interacting with other cultures can seriously give you a whole new outlook on life and learning perspectives of different cultures and humans always fascinates me which is why, next year, I am planning to take a year off to work at a bed and breakfast in France. People from all over the globe come to bed and breakfasts, which will give e a lot of face time with a lot of different cultures and learn a little bit about everything. My housing and dining will be paid for while I meet people, make lifelong connections and put all the things I learned about in cross cultural communication to work. Cross Cultural Communication opened up my eyes to some pretty basic things that you just never really put names to. The best lesson I learned was on cultural empathy. The idea that you don’t only tolerate another culture, but you understand it at its most basic level is incredibly important in how you connect with other people.A lot of my best friends are actually international and live in other countries. One of my best friends ever lives in Greece and looking back on our friendship, I realize how I subconsciously underwent the process of cultural empathy by asking her about the different practices she went through and the different ways she understood American culture and society. Unfortunately, I did not do the same with my German ex-boyfriend who lived in Germany which probably could have saved a lot of grief on my end.Another lesson I found interesting in cro ss-cultural communication was reflexivity. Reflexivity is the ability and willingness of a researcher to acknowledge their bias. When I went to H Street, I realized my bias growing up in small town liberal suburbia. I realize my bias everyday when I meet people who grow up in different countries, parts of the country or even socio economic class. While interviewing Josh Parrish for my interview project, I saw how different our lives were and yet how similar we were.Reflexivity is not only important to acknowledge for reliable research, but for dependable relationships as well. Talking about white privilege really interested me throughout the course. Growing up as white, I kind of always resented the doors that automatically opened for me in some sense of the word. I can’t pinpoint why, but I like the challenge of overcoming adversity. In the School of Public Affairs Leadership Program, we talked about the idea of Privilege and Power and we watched an interesting TED talks tha t introduced the idea of â€Å"The Power of a Single Story. Acknowledging the different presets in society is important to society and to be able to communicate with each other. If I could change one thing about this class, it would definitely be about the reading. The readings were incredibly numerous and sometimes, I couldn’t finish everything, which led to a serious cycle of me falling incredibly behind. I would’ve loved for a way to cut down the readings, perhaps only read important excerpts or something because the workload was either really hard or very laid back.The lessons I learned in cross cultural communication feel less immense than other classes, but I already notice how I look around and see how these lessons are applicable in real life. I constantly look back at my history and realize how helpful these skills would have been months and even years ago. Being culturally empathetic is the most important lesson I could have learned and I feel was the overar ching theme to the whole course. I found it helpful to learn how to properly acculturate into a foreign culture and while I may not become a foreign diplomat because of this class, I definitely learned some important imformation. Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down December 11, 2012 Section 1: Who is the one to delineate fault for a miscommunication and misunderstanding between two cultures? In Anne Fadiman’s novel, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, she begins the novel as an attempt to allocate responsibility for the mistreatment and exacerbation of Lia Lee’s epilepsy. The tension between the Hmong and United States medical culture exemplified the strain in America between a foreign culture dependent on rituals and society’s norm. As the novel progress, Fadiman realizes that neither culture is truly at fault.Lia’s situation stemmed from a clash of cultural beliefs and practices that could have been solved by a respect and empathy of the significance of cross-cultural communication. Throughout the narrative, there were characters that were able to be culturally empathetic while some were unable to appreciate the cultural differences between the two entities and realize the necessity for cooperation and unders tanding. The Hmong have a saying that they repeat at the beginning of every story, â€Å"Hais cuaj txub kaum txub,† which means, â€Å"speak of all kinds of things† (Fadiman 13).These words depict the belief in the Hmong culture that the world is full of things that might not appear related but actually are. This concept relates to the Hmong’s history. Their development as a culture is tainted with inconsiderate counter cultures that restricted their freedom to practice their cultural rituals. This greatly influenced their ability to trust cultures that are not their own. Their general distrust in any culture different from their own can be mainly traced back to the Chinese and Indochinese portion of their saga.Basically, the Hmong have been chased out of any home they have ever had due to their unwillingness to take orders, their affliction to losing and the imperative detail that they would rather flee, fight, or die than surrender. This all boils down to the fact that they are not easily swayed by other culture’s customs. This ethnocentric attitude has greatly attributed to the Hmong culture’s general distrust and distaste for any culture but their own. Lia’s parents, Nao Kao and Foua Lee, and much of the Hmong community were skeptical of trusting the â€Å"white people† in the medical profession and in the community.In fact, Lia’s case became the litmus test for Hmong community and turned out to be a deciding factor as to whether the Hmong community in Merced, California would trust the medical professionals when they found themselves at MCMC in a similar state as Lia. Despite this inherent distrust of any culture dissimilar to their own, the Lee’s were able to trust one CPA worker, Jeanine Hilt, who took the Lee’s case very personally. Jeanine made it her mission to fight the medical industry tyranny on behalf of the Hmong culture and became the only person to ask the Lees their opinion .Because of the language barrier, many medical professionals saw talking to the Lee’s as a lost cause to communicate with, which led the Lees to believe they were being taken advantage of. Jeanine was the only one who thought to ask how the Lees felt about how the doctors were treating Lia and their culture. Because of this openness to communication and genuine interest in their answers, she explained to the hospital how the Lees, and the Hmong culture, felt about Lia’s epilepsy and why they were running into to so many conflicts with the Hmong culture.Jeanine’s open approach allowed her to see what the barrier was between the Lees ad the medical profession. The Lee’s and the Hmong culture considered Lia an anointed one and her â€Å"illness† as a blessing rather than a weakness. In the Hmong culture, people born with epilepsy are believed to be the anointed ones and are destined to a life as a shaman. They call it â€Å"qaug dab peg,† or â €Å"the spirit catches you and you fall down. † People in the medical profession did not understand the concept of spirits and the importance of epilepsy for the Hmong. Jeanine was the only white person who adamantly fought for the rights of the Hmong.She was able to do this by the ability to effectively and cross culturally communicate. A similar problem occurred when the Lees refused to give their daughter her daily medicine regimen. Lia was taken away from her family and put into foster care. Jeanine fought to get Lia back to her family as her epileptic episodes became more frequent and dangerous. After she succeeded, it was Jeanine’s mission to educate the Lees, especially Foua, on the drug regimen and explain to her the importance of the drugs and to understand Nao Kao and Foua’s aversion to medicine.Hilt was the only person that took the time to listen to Foua and her concerns regarding the unnatural substances. And after Lia’s large grand mal seizu re, she was the only one who tackled the problem of how the Hmong family was treating Lia’s developmental delays. Jeanine’s key to success was always keeping the lines of communication open between herself and the Lees and therefore between the Lees and the MCMC. In order to cross culturally communicate, Jeanine focused on a caring approach that was â€Å"culturally empathetic† and used the Lees daughter, May, as her translator.She did this because having another unfamiliar person in the room, especially a translater, would make the Lees uncomfortable and less open to effective communication. Hilt also took the time to get to know the Lees. She knew the names of all their seven surviving children and most importantly never abandoned Lia or her family even in Nao Kao’s darkest moments. As part of the Hmong culture, they are naturally very violent and are not deterred by being outnumbered. Nao Kao threatened a translator that came and told the Child Protect ive Services were taking Lia away.Jeanine understood the aversion to having someone’s child taken away and made sure the threats Nao Kao made didn’t affect the courts decision to let Lia return. Jeanine’s empathy was deepened by two factors. She understood the burden of a chronic illness because she had asthma. She also admired the connection and closeness of the Hmong families. She was deeply connected to this family and to this child so she harassed the government and the hospital until the Lees got what they deserved. This included a pediatric hospital bed for Lia’s last days at home.This led the Lees to hold Jeanine in high esteem and allowed for a trust that was incredibly hard to earn from the Hmong culture. While Jeanine took the time to understand the Hmong culture, Nao Kao, Lia’s father, did little to reciprocate. He greatly appreciated her attempt at being understanding, however he never believed it was his responsibility to do the same. Even then, Foua was usually the most receptive to Jeanine’s triumphs. Historically Hmongs have become the pariahs of society.With this in mind, Nao Kao never really made the effort to be part of a society that he knew went against his beliefs and therefore was rejecting him. It is also prominent in Hmong culture, that the man is the strongest part of the family and the most emotionally disconnected. While the Hmong were fighting the Chinese, they even killed their wives and children so they wouldn’t be emotionally distracted. Nao Kao hyper masculine attitude led him and his wife to be passively obedient. In the book, Fadiman writes â€Å"It was typical or Hmong patients to appear passively obedient – thus protecting their own dignity by concealing their ignorance and their doctor’s dignity by acting deferential – and then, as soon as they left the hospital, to ignore everything to which they had supposedly assented† (Fadiman 68). This is no way to effectively communicate between two cultures. By Nao Kao affirming that he would give the medicine and not at least trying to explain that it is against his belief and/or he does not understand how to give the medicine, he falsely gives the impression to the doctors that Lia will be cared for at home.Not only does not communicate that he will not give the medicine, but he also doesn’t communicate that he has not given the medicine to Lia when the Lees continue to take her to the hospital seizure after seizure. While the Hmongs believed being epileptic was a sort of blessing, they also understood the repercussions and knew the disease was at least semi-dangerous. That is the reason the Lees continued to take Lia to MCMC over and over again, despite their hatred for the medical culture and the inability to effectively communicate. However Nao Kao Lee was most definitely stuck in his ways.Fadiman explains a observation by Francois Marie Savina as to his first impressions to the Hmong in 1924. Savina, a missionary, stated â€Å"ethnic durability can be attributed to six factors: religion; love of liberty; traditional costumes; refusal to marry outside their race; life in the cold, dry mountainous areas; and the toughening effects of war† (Fadiman 208). The Lee family did little the acculturate themselves into the United States culture and came here to merely escape prosecution. When the Lees came to America, their relatives had to show them how the country worked. They relied greatly on their children.After Seventeen years of living here they still speak only Hmong and practice only Hmong traditions. The Hmong culture is famously stuck in its ways and it was no different for Nao Kao. The mixture between his role in his culture as well as the culture itself lends itself to the inability to communicate between the Lee family and the MCMC medical staff. The first thing that would allow two cultures, such as the Hmong and the United States medical culture, to effectively communicate is knowing what their core values, core distinction, and some key elements to their culture in regards to value dimensions.The Hmong’s value dimensions tend to fall on one extreme, while America falls on the other side of the spectrum. For example, in the Identity value dimension, the Hmong are highly collectivist, which means their core value is group harmony and their core distinction is whether you’re in group/out group. However, the United States population is based on individualist side of the identity spectrum. This means they believe in individual freedom and the core distinction is whether its me/others (Hofstede Pederson Hofstede 94-97).This has a large impact in how two cultures interact with each other because while the United States will believe that the Hmong should do whatever it takes to protect themselves while the Hmong believe they should maintain the peace with the gods or else they will be punished which focusâ⠂¬â„¢ on group harmony. The virtue value dimension also has a strong effect on the differences between these cultures. The Hmong are considered extreme long-term orientation, which values the long-term benefits. The US medical culture is more oriented on today’s effects, otherwise known as extreme short-term orientation (Hofstede Pederson Hofstede 109-112).This shows why the Hmong are so superstitious because they are worried about the futures of their children and even their grandchildren. The medical industry is not superstitious and therefore believes in saving the life that needs saving now and not later. They do not discriminate on between now and later. A lot of lessons can be learned from how Jeanine was able to effectively communicate between the Hmong and US medical cultures. First of all, it is important to be open to new ways of communication between cultures and to not only find similarities, but also understand the differences between cultures.The Hmong culture a nd the Medical culture in the United States seem on opposite ends of the cultural spectrum. In that brief period of Lia’s seizures being decreased and her seemingly getting better, the Lees understood that they had to give Lia her medicine regularly and the hospital understood why the Lees were hesitant about giving their child too many unnatural substances. When the two entities understood each other’s culture and cultural differences, Lia’s health improved and they were able to understand each other beyond the most basic level.This is called being culturally empathetic. Lia’s illness was a test for the two cultures. It was a situation that forced a broken system to recognize its faults and demonstrate how it needs to be fixed. At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter who worsened Lia’s illness because placing blame won’t help either culture understand each other. By the end of the text, as Fadiman is reflecting on the case, she writ es â€Å"I do not know if Lia would be able to walk and talk today had she been treated by Arthur Kleinman instead of by Neil Ernst and Peggy Philp.However, I have come to believe that her life was ruined not by septic shock or noncompliant parents but by cross-cultural misunderstanding† (Fadiman 262). The MCMC has learned multiple lessons from Lia’s epilepsy. They learned to be culturally conscious, they removed the organ donor box from the hospital waiver and posted details about Lia’s case so her illness won’t be mistreated ever again. The key to communicating effectively is to realize that a culture is different from yours and value their judgments just as much as you value your own.Jeanine was able to do it, hopefully Nao Kao will one day do it as well as every doctor in the medical profession, and especially the doctors that are in heavily populated minority areas. Bibliography 1. Fadiman, Anne. The spirit catches you and you fall down: a Hmong chil d, her American doctors, and the collision of two cultures. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1997. 2. Hofstede, Gert Jan, Paul Pedersen, and Geert H. Hofstede. Exploring culture. Yarmouth, Me. : Intercultural Press, 2002 Section II: Throughout my life, I have always been a person who loved traveling.I will always love traveling and someday, I hope to have a job where traveling is a requirement. When I travel, I hoped to come as close to emersion as possible in the time span I’m there. I believe interacting with other cultures can seriously give you a whole new outlook on life and learning perspectives of different cultures and humans always fascinates me which is why, next year, I am planning to take a year off to work at a bed and breakfast in France. People from all over the globe come to bed and breakfasts, which will give e a lot of face time with a lot of different cultures and learn a little bit about everything. My housing and dining will be paid for while I meet people, make lifelong connections and put all the things I learned about in cross cultural communication to work. Cross Cultural Communication opened up my eyes to some pretty basic things that you just never really put names to. The best lesson I learned was on cultural empathy. The idea that you don’t only tolerate another culture, but you understand it at its most basic level is incredibly important in how you connect with other people.A lot of my best friends are actually international and live in other countries. One of my best friends ever lives in Greece and looking back on our friendship, I realize how I subconsciously underwent the process of cultural empathy by asking her about the different practices she went through and the different ways she understood American culture and society. Unfortunately, I did not do the same with my German ex-boyfriend who lived in Germany which probably could have saved a lot of grief on my end.Another lesson I found interesting in cro ss-cultural communication was reflexivity. Reflexivity is the ability and willingness of a researcher to acknowledge their bias. When I went to H Street, I realized my bias growing up in small town liberal suburbia. I realize my bias everyday when I meet people who grow up in different countries, parts of the country or even socio economic class. While interviewing Josh Parrish for my interview project, I saw how different our lives were and yet how similar we were.Reflexivity is not only important to acknowledge for reliable research, but for dependable relationships as well. Talking about white privilege really interested me throughout the course. Growing up as white, I kind of always resented the doors that automatically opened for me in some sense of the word. I can’t pinpoint why, but I like the challenge of overcoming adversity. In the School of Public Affairs Leadership Program, we talked about the idea of Privilege and Power and we watched an interesting TED talks tha t introduced the idea of â€Å"The Power of a Single Story. Acknowledging the different presets in society is important to society and to be able to communicate with each other. If I could change one thing about this class, it would definitely be about the reading. The readings were incredibly numerous and sometimes, I couldn’t finish everything, which led to a serious cycle of me falling incredibly behind. I would’ve loved for a way to cut down the readings, perhaps only read important excerpts or something because the workload was either really hard or very laid back.The lessons I learned in cross cultural communication feel less immense than other classes, but I already notice how I look around and see how these lessons are applicable in real life. I constantly look back at my history and realize how helpful these skills would have been months and even years ago. Being culturally empathetic is the most important lesson I could have learned and I feel was the overar ching theme to the whole course. I found it helpful to learn how to properly acculturate into a foreign culture and while I may not become a foreign diplomat because of this class, I definitely learned some important imformation.

The Secret to ACT Math Mastering the Time Crunch

The Secret to ACT Math Mastering the Time Crunch SAT / ACT Prep Online Guides and Tips The ACT is a complex test thatrequires both an understanding of how the test works and a strategic approach to beat. The more you know about the secrets of each section, the better you'll be at maximizing your overall point-gain and getting the scores you want. And today we're here to walk you through how to do your very best on the ACT math section. Each subject section requires its own unique approach, and the ACT math section can give even some of the highest math achievers a run for their money. But luckily we’re here to help! We'll takeyou through the most important strategy you’ll need toknow andteach you how toconquer the ACT math section once and for all. ACT MathBasics Before we talk strategy, it’s crucial that you understand exactly what the ACT math section looks like and how it’s structured. The ACT math section is- like all the ACT subject sections- complete and contained.This means that there is only one math section in the entire test, and you cannot come back to it once the time is complete. You must maintainyour focus duringyour allotted time, as you will get only one chance to do well on your math section per ACT. Every ACT will give you60 math questions in 60 minutes- an average of one minute per question- and the questions get more and more difficult as you go. So questions1-10 will be fairlysimple and quick to complete, while questions 50-60 will be considerably more difficult. Don't be alarmed if completing 60 math questions in 60 minutes sounds like a trickyprospect! This is a fast paced test for almost all students, but coming prepared and knowing the secrets for how to tackle the math section will help you to raise those scores. The Secret to Doing Well on the ACT Math Section Long story short? The biggest hurdle of the ACT math section is the time crunch. If allowed to take the test at a leisurely pace, many students find that they only miss a small number of ACT math questions (either from misunderstanding the question or because of a lack of math content knowledge).But putting students on such a fast clock tends to ratchet up anxiety, leads students to make sloppy mistakes, and can make even the most level-headed student forget how to work through familiar problems. Keep in mind that many students do not finish the math section in the allotted 60 minutes.The test is purposefully designed so that a large number of students don’t make it to the end of the section having read and answered each question.So don’t feel like you’ve done something wrong if you can’t complete your math section before the time is up. The secret to doing well on the ACT math section lies in mastering yourtiming.You must keep track of the clock, develop a timing plan before the test (and stick to it!), and walk that fine balance between speed and accuracy.After all, if you can reach the end of your 60 questions but get33% of themwrong due to sloppy errors, then you’re no better off than had youslowed down and answered the first 40 questions perfectly Do keep in mind that youwon'thave any kind of outside force to help you measure your time or keep track of the progression of that 60 minutes, so definitely bring a watch (or at least keep careful track of the classroom clock). Your best friend during the ACT. How to Improve Your ACT Math Performance Because the secret to doing well on the ACT math section is all about your timing, you'll want to have a game plan and timing schedule worked out before test day. Your timing schedule willbe based on your practice performance, your personal math pace, and your scoring goals, so don't worry if your game plan looks different than anyone else's. Keep focusedon how you, and you alone, can maximize your ACT math section point gain. To begin, break the math section into chunks and set timing goals for completing each one.(Note that your timing will besomething to fine tune as you complete your study regimenand as you take your practice tests. Over time, you will improveand will have to tweak your final timing, which iswhy practicing and keeping track of your progress overtime is essential.) It's simplest to break the math section into three parts: the first 20 questions (â€Å"easy†), questions 21-40 (â€Å"medium†), and questions 41 - 60 (â€Å"hard†), and allot a specific amount of time to each section. We'll break down more specific timing strategies based on your current and ideal scoresbelow, but there is still one tip to keep in mind for all scorers: because the question difficulty increases in ascending order, it’s not optimal to give each math section (easy, medium, hard)the same amount of time. You'll instead make the most out of your time if you giveyourselfless time for the first section, spend the majority of your time on the middle section, and dedicatetheremaining time tothe lastsection. As you try your timing techniques, experiment by increasing your pace until the point at which your accuracy significantly drops off. Then back up a step from there.Maybe you only need 10 minutes to accurately answer the first 20 questions, or maybe you need 20 or 25 minutes. You’ll find your best pace through trial and error, so take our timing schedules as a baselinewith which to start. Now, depending on what your score goals are, let's see how this works in action by breaking down the timing into more detail and setting those baselines. For Students Aiming for a Score of≠¤ 26 If you're looking to get a maximum score of 26, then your best bet is to ignore those last 20 "hard" questions altogether. Focus your attention and your timing strategies on the first 40 questions only. This will maximize your chances for getting those first 40 questions correct, while still leaving you an opportunity to gainout a handfulofpoints in the "hard" section. (How will you still earnpointsfrom questions 41-60? Make sure you always guess on any question you don't know the answer to. For more information about how to make the most of your guesswork, check out the best strategy for "blind" guessing on the ACT.) By focusing your time and attention on the first 40 questions alone, you'll be able to slow down and give each question your best shot. Start by breaking your timing down into three chunks like so: Questions 1-20: 25 minutes Questions 21-40: 32 minutes Questions 41-60: 3 minutes (just to fill in the bubbles) Again, your timing will change over time and you can feel free to tweak it here and there as it suits you, but take this as a place to begin your timing strategy. For Students Aiming for a Score of 26 - 30 If you're aiming for a mid-high score in the 26-30 range, you'll focus most of your time on the first 50 questions and give yourself a relatively short amount of time for the last 10. Start by breaking down your timing into the following chunks: Questions 1-20: 15 minutes Questions 21-40: 25 minutes Questions 41 - 60: 20 minutes It may feel strange not togive yourself the most time on the difficult section, but remember that each question is worth the same amount of points (one). Slowing down to maximize your point gain in the mid-level section can often garner you more points overall than trying to speedthrough the test or spending too much time attemptingto answer the most difficult questions. Because you're focusing most of your attention on the first 50 questions, just skim the last 10 questionsand select the ones you feel you can do quickly and accurately.Allot yourself 5-10 minutes for questions 51-60, but don’t approach them one-by-one in order.Instead, take a minute or two to briefly look over each question and mark the ones you feel that you can do (or even just the ones you know enough about to be able to eliminate an answer choice or two). Answer the ones you marked as best you can and make your best blind guesses for the rest. By sacrificing some of your short remaining time to selecting the easiest or most familiar questions of the last 10, you will be able to maximize your overall points. And it will help prevent you from taking on a question that will occupy too much of your limited time, effort, and concentration. For Students Aiming for a Score of ≠¥ 31 If you're aiming for a score of 31 or above, you'll need to look at and (at least attempt to) answer every questionon the ACT math section. Though you'll still want to dedicate the slight majority of your time to the middle 20 questionsof the test, you'll need to minimizeyour time spendon the first 20 questions and increase your time for the last 20 as much as you comfortably can. But why spend the majority of your time in the middle section still? Doing well on the ACT is a constant balance between speed and accuracy. Questions 21-40 are where the test shifts gears and these questions can be deceptive, often appearing"easier" than they actually are. If you can maintain accuracy in the first40 questions while going faster, then feel free to do so. But try this timing schedule to start: Questions 1-20: 12 minutes Questions 21-40: 25 minutes Questions 41 - 60: 23 minutes Always keep in mind that your job is to maximize your overall points, so don’t get hung up on any one question.Learning how and when to move on from a question is all about being strict with your timing and paying attention to how you’re using it. Mastering the ACT is a matter of strategy. Take the time to prepare beforehand and you'll have the edge. Conclusion: Mastering ACT Math Timing For most students, the "math" part of the ACT math section isn't actually the most difficult aspect of the test- it's the time crunch. If you were allowed to take the test in as leisurelya manner as you wanted, you'd probably shock yourself with how high you scored. Thus learning how to master the timing of the test is priority one. Everyone will develop their own personal timing paces, but starting your practice with a baseline timing strategy is crucial.Start with one of our schedules, based on your current and projected scores, and then finagle it until you find the best balance between speed and accuracy you can manage. Stick to your plan on test day and then celebrate, because you rocked that ACT math section! What's Next? Want to know the number one secrets for success on theother ACT subjects?Check out the top strategies for conqueringthe ACTscience, reading, and writingsections. Need more ACT math section study help? We've put together a complete list of all the ACT math study you could possibly need, all in one place. Don't know where to get your practice materials?Check out our complete list of where to get your free ACT practice tests. Want to improve your ACT score by 4 points? Check out our best-in-class online ACT prep program. We guarantee your money back if you don't improve your ACT score by 4 points or more. Our program is entirely online, and it customizes what you study to your strengths and weaknesses. If you liked this Math lesson, you'll love our program.Along with more detailed lessons, you'll get thousands ofpractice problems organized by individual skills so you learn most effectively. We'll also give you a step-by-step program to follow so you'll never be confused about what to study next. Check out our 5-day free trial:

The Dash Familys Roles

The Dash Familys Roles The Dash Familys Roles The Dash Familys Roles By Mark Nichol The en dash is the oft-neglected middle sibling of the horizontal-line family of symbols that serve to connect words and numbers for various reasons. The em dash (- ) is the dashing member of the brood, used somewhat sparingly to indicate a sudden break in syntax- either to signal a shift in sentence construction, as here, or joining with a twin to frame a parenthetical word or phrase (just as a pair of commas would be used in the midst of a sentence or two parentheses would be employed anywhere). The smallest, the hyphen (-), is the busiest, indicating connections between words, such as when the phrase â€Å"highest scoring† is hyphenated to signal its combined modification of the word that follows in the phrase â€Å"highest-scoring player† or to link two numbers in reference to a score or vote. The en dash (–), however, sometimes steps in to take the place of the hyphen: It is employed when an open compound is part of the phrasal adjective, signaling that the entire compound, not just the last word in the compound, is linked to the next word, as in â€Å"Civil War–era artifacts† (rather than â€Å"Civil War-era† or â€Å"Civil-War-era†) or â€Å"Los Angeles–to–San Francisco flight† (rather than in â€Å"Los Angeles-to-San Francisco flight† or â€Å"Los-Angeles-to-San-Francisco flight†). Note, however, that open compounds need not be proper nouns, as this quip about an advertising agency with a name consisting of a sequence of initials demonstrates: â€Å"This alphabet soup–named firm helps get clients on the gravy train.† If a hyphen were used in place of an en dash here, the reference would (confusingly) be to a soup-named agency of an alphabet nature. (Also, some publishers, presumably for aesthetic reasons, employ en dashes in place of em dashes.) The other major function of an en dash, by the way, is to replace to to indicate a number range, as in â€Å"Answer quiz questions 1–10.† (Remember that because scores are not number ranges, a hyphen is the correct symbol for linking two totals.) In both types of usage, a hyphen is often erroneously employed in place of an en dash (though for the sake of simplicity, some publications, especially newspapers, deliberately avoid use of the en dash). Also, note that although both hyphens and en dashes are employed as minus signs, the minus sign is technically a distinct symbol that in formal publishing is set using a distinct code. In informal usage, an en dash, more equivalent in size to plus and equal signs than a hyphen, is preferable. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Punctuation category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:12 Signs and Symbols You Should KnowEmpathy "With" or Empathy "For"?45 Idioms About the Number One