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File:Chinese banquet in a banquet hall.JPG Summary Licensing File history Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time. File usage The following 4 pages use this file: Global file usage The following other wikis use this file: Metadata This file contains additional information, probably added from the digital camera or scanner used to create or digitize it. If the file has been modified from its original state, some details may not fully reflect the modified file. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociology_of_education] | [TOKENS: 3591] |
Contents Sociology of education 1800s: Martineau · Tocqueville · Marx · Spencer · Le Bon · Ward · Pareto · Tönnies · Veblen · Simmel · Durkheim · Addams · Mead · Weber · Du Bois · Mannheim · Elias The sociology of education is the study of how public institutions and individual experiences affect education and its outcomes. It is mostly concerned with the public schooling systems of modern industrial societies, including the expansion of higher, further, adult, and continuing education. Education is seen as a fundamentally optimistic human endeavour characterised by aspirations for progress and betterment. It is understood by many to be a means of overcoming handicaps, achieving greater equality, and acquiring wealth and social status. Education is perceived as a place where children can develop according to their unique needs and potential. Not only can children develop, but young and older adults too. Social interaction between people through education can always further development no matter what age they are. It is also perceived as one of the best means of achieving greater social equality. Many would say that the purpose of education should be to develop every individual to their full potential, and give them a chance to achieve as much in life as their natural abilities allow (meritocracy). Few would argue that any education system accomplishes this goal perfectly. Some take a particularly critical view, arguing that the education system is designed with the intention of causing the social reproduction of inequality. Sociology is study of human relationship. Foundations Systematic sociology of education began with the work of Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) on moral education as a basis for organic solidarity, and with studies by Max Weber (1864–1920) on the Chinese literati as an instrument of political control. After World War II, however, the subject received renewed interest around the world: from technological functionalism in the US, egalitarian reform of opportunity in Europe, and human-capital theory in economics. These all implied that, with industrialization, the need for a technologically skilled labour force undermines class distinctions and other ascriptive systems of stratification, and that education promotes social mobility. However, statistical and field research across numerous societies showed a persistent link between an individual's social class and achievement, and suggested that education could only achieve limited social mobility. Sociological studies showed how schooling patterns reflected, rather than challenged, class stratification and racial and sexual discrimination. After the general collapse of functionalism from the late 1960s onwards, the idea of education as an unmitigated good was even more profoundly challenged. Neo-Marxists argued that school education simply produced a docile labour force essential to late-capitalist class relations. Theoretical perspectives The sociology of education contains a number of theories. Some of the main theories are presented below. The Political Arithmetic tradition within the sociology of education began with Hogben (1938) and denotes a tradition of politically critical quantitative research dealing with social inequalities, especially those generated by social stratification (Heath 2000). Important works in this tradition have been (Glass 1954), (Floud, et al. 1956) and (Halsey, et al. 1980). All of these works were concerned with the way in which school structures were implicated in social class inequalities in Britain. More recent work in this tradition has broadened its focus to include gender, ethnic differentials and international differences. While researchers in this tradition have engaged with sociological theories such as Rational Choice Theory and Cultural Reproduction Theory, the political arithmetic tradition has tended to remain rather sceptical of 'grand theory' and very much concerned with empirical evidence and social policy. The political arithmetic tradition was attacked by the 'New Sociology of Education' of the 1970s which rejected quantitative research methods. This heralded a period of methodological division within the sociology of education. However, the political arithmetic tradition, while rooted in quantitative methods, has increasingly engaged with mixed methods approaches. Structural functionalists believe that society leans towards social equilibrium and social order. They see society like a human body, in which institutions such as education are like important organs that keep the society/body healthy and well. Social reality is structured and differentiated and provides social science with its subject matter. This explains why individuals act as role incumbents and perform specific tasks on a regular basis as manifested at the level of observable event. The relation between teacher and student lies at heart of the realist conception of social structure. The internal relation between roles, distinct from the individual people who fill them and whom they casually affect. The relation between teacher and student is closely internal because each could not exist without each other. Functionalists view education as one of the more important social institutions in society. They emphasize that education contributes to two types of functions: manifest functions, which are the intended and visible functions of education; and latent functions, which are hidden and unintended functions. Manifest Functions There are several major manifest functions associated with education. The first is socialization. The French sociologist, Émile Durkheim, established the academic discipline of sociology, characterized schools as, "socialization agencies that teach children how to get along with others and prepare them for adult economic roles" (Durkheim 1898). Socialization involves learning the rules and norms of the society as a whole. One of the roles of schools is to teach students conformity to law and respect for authority. Education is also an important tool used by students towards upward mobility. Higher learning institutions are viewed as vehicles for moving students closer to their careers that will help them become successful. Latent Functions Education also fulfills latent functions. Much goes on in school that has little to do with formal education. The educational setting introduces students to social networks that might last for years and can help people find jobs after their schooling is completed. Another latent function is the ability to work with others in small groups, a skill that is transferable to a workplace that might not be learned in a home school setting. Social health means the same as social order, and is guaranteed when nearly everyone accepts the general moral values of their society. Hence structural functionalists believe the aim of key institutions, such as education, is to socialize children and teenagers. Socialization is the process by which the new generation learns the knowledge, attitudes and values that they will need as productive citizens. Education's primary role is to convey basic knowledge and skills to future generations. Although this aim is stated in the formal curriculum, it is mainly achieved through the hidden curriculum, a subtler, but nonetheless powerful, indoctrination of the norms and values of the wider society. Students learn these values because their behavior at school is regulated (Durkheim) until they gradually internalize and accept them. Additionally, education is an important tool in the transmission of core values. The core values in education reflect on the economic and political systems that originally fueled education. One of the most important core value that is transmitted through the education system is individualism, the principle of being independent and self-reliant. From a very early age children learn that society seeks out and praises the best individuals. Connected to individualism, self-esteem is also developed through educational curriculum. Self-esteem is the ability to have confidence in one's own decisions, therefore, having individualism allows for a growth in self-esteem that cannot be created without. Compared to Japanese students for example, curriculum in Japan is focused on social esteem (focusing on bringing honor to a group) rather than self-esteem. Education must also perform another function: As various jobs become vacant, they must be filled with the appropriate people. Therefore, the other purpose of education is to sort and rank individuals for placement in the labor market [Munro, 1997]. Those with high achievement will be trained for the most important jobs and in reward, be given the highest incomes. Those who achieve the least, will be given the least demanding (intellectually at any rate, if not physically) jobs, and hence the least income. According to Sennet and Cobb however, "to believe that ability alone decides who is rewarded is to be deceived". Meighan agrees, stating that large numbers of capable students from working-class backgrounds fail to achieve satisfactory standards in school and therefore fail to obtain the status they deserve. Jacob believes this is because the middle class cultural experiences that are provided at school may be contrary to the experiences working-class children receive at home. In other words, working class children are not adequately prepared to cope at school. They are therefore "cooled out" from school with the least qualifications, hence they get the least desirable jobs, and so remain working class. Sargent confirms this cycle, arguing that schooling supports continuity, which in turn supports social order. Talcott Parsons believed that this process, whereby some students were identified and labelled educational failures, "was a necessary activity which one part of the social system, education, performed for the whole". Yet the structural functionalist perspective maintains that this social order, this continuity, is what most people desire. this is one of the most critical thing in sociology The perspective of conflict theory, contrary to the structural functionalist perspective, believes that society is full of vying social groups with different aspirations, different access to life chances and gain different social rewards. The conflict theory sees the purpose of education as a way to maintain social inequality and a way to preserve the power of those who dominate society. Relations in society, in this view, are mainly based on exploitation, oppression, domination and subordination. Many teachers assume that students will have particular middle class experiences at home, and for some children this assumption isn't necessarily true. Some children are expected to help their parents after school and carry considerable domestic responsibilities in their often single-parent home. The demands of this domestic labour often make it difficult for them to find time to do all their homework and thus affects their academic performance. Where teachers have softened the formality of regular study and integrated student's preferred working methods into the curriculum, they noted that particular students displayed strengths they had not been aware of before. However few teachers deviate from the traditional curriculum, and the curriculum conveys what constitutes knowledge as determined by the state – and those in power [Young in ]. This knowledge isn't very meaningful to many of the students, who see it as pointless. Wilson & Wyn state that the students realise there is little or no direct link between the subjects they are doing and their perceived future in the labour market. Anti-school values displayed by these children are often derived from their consciousness of their real interests. Sargent believes that for working-class students, striving to succeed and absorbing the school's middle class values, are accepting their inferior social position as much as if they were determined to fail. Fitzgerald states that "irrespective of their academic ability or desire to learn, students from poor families have relatively little chance of securing success". On the other hand, for middle and especially upper-class children, maintaining their superior position in society requires little effort. The federal government subsidises 'independent' private schools enabling the rich to obtain 'good education' by paying for it. With this 'good education', rich children perform better, achieve higher and obtain greater rewards. In this way, the continuation of privilege and wealth for the elite is made possible in continuum. Conflict theorists believe this social reproduction continues to occur because the whole education system is overlain with ideology provided by the dominant group. In effect, they perpetuate the myth that education is available to all to provide a means of achieving wealth and status. Anyone who fails to achieve this goal, according to the myth, has only themselves to blame. Wright agrees, stating that "the effect of the myth is to…stop them from seeing that their personal troubles are part of major social issues". The duplicity is so successful that many parents endure appalling jobs for many years, believing that this sacrifice will enable their children to have opportunities in life that they did not have themselves. Conflict theorists believe that the educational system is maintaining the status quo by dulling the lower classes into being obedient workers. These people who are poor and disadvantaged are victims of a societal confidence trick. They have been encouraged to believe that a major goal of schooling is to strengthen equality while, in reality, schools reflect society's intention to maintain the previous unequal distribution of status and power [Fitzgerald, cited in ]. Conflict theorists point to several key factors to defend their position. First, conflict theorists look at property tax. Typically, the areas of affluent districts have more money, so they can afford to pay teachers higher salaries, purchase new technology, and attract better teachers. Students in these districts are typically white, which means a majority of minority students in the United States do not receive any of these advantages and are less likely to go to college. This connects to the conflict theorist viewpoint that the educational system is simply a perpetuator of the status quo. Additionally, conflict theorists including Bowles and Gintis argued that schools directly reproduce social and economic inequalities embedded in the capitalist economy. They believed that this conflict played out in classrooms where students were marked by larger and highly stratified economic structure. Whether or not current leaders in sociology agreed with Bowles and Gintis, they all undeniably came to operate in fields guided by these ideas. This perspective has been criticised as deterministic and pessimistic, while there is some evidence for social mobility among disadvantaged students. It should be recognised however that it is a model, an aspect of reality which is an important part of the picture. This theory of social reproduction has been significantly theorised by Pierre Bourdieu who aimed at analyzing social class inequalities in education. However Bourdieu as a social theorist has always been concerned with the dichotomy between the objective and subjective, or to put it another way, between structure and agency. Bourdieu has therefore built his theoretical framework around the important concepts of habitus, field and cultural capital. These concepts are based on the idea that objective structures determine individuals' chances, through the mechanism of the habitus, where individuals internalise these structures. However, the habitus is also formed by, for example, an individual's position in various fields, their family and their everyday experiences. Therefore, one's class position does not determine one's life chances, although it does play an important part, alongside other factors. Bourdieu used the idea of cultural capital to explore the differences in outcomes for students from different classes in the French educational system. He explored the tension between the conservative reproduction and the innovative production of knowledge and experience. He found that this tension is intensified by considerations of which particular cultural past and present is to be conserved and reproduced in schools. Bourdieu argues that it is the culture of the dominant groups, and therefore their cultural capital, which is embodied in schools, and that this leads to social reproduction. James Coleman also focused a lot on the themes of social reproduction and inequality. Coleman inspired many of the current leaders of sociology of education, but his work also led to a heightened focus on empiricism. The cultural capital of the dominant group, in the form of practices and relation to culture, is assumed by the school to be the natural and only proper type of cultural capital and is therefore legitimated. It demands "uniformly of all its students that they should have what it does not give" [Bourdieu]. This legitimate cultural capital allows students who possess it to gain educational capital in the form of qualifications. Those lower-class students are therefore disadvantaged. To gain qualifications they must acquire legitimate cultural capital, by exchanging their own (usually working-class) cultural capital. This exchange is not a straightforward one, due to the class ethos of the lower-class students. Class ethos is described as the particular dispositions towards, and subjective expectations of, school and culture. It is in part determined by the objective chances of that class. This means that not only do children find success harder in school due to the fact that they must learn a new way of 'being', or relating to the world, and especially, a new way of relating to and using language, but they must also act against their instincts and expectations. The subjective expectations influenced by the objective structures found in the school, perpetuate social reproduction by encouraging less-privileged students to eliminate themselves from the system, so that fewer and fewer are to be found as one journeys through the levels of the system. The process of social reproduction is neither perfect nor complete, but still, only a small number of less-privileged students achieve success. For the majority of these students who do succeed at school, they have had to internalise the values of the dominant classes and use them as their own, to the detriment of their original habitus and cultural values. Therefore, Bourdieu's perspective reveals how objective structures play an important role in determining individual achievement in school, but allows for the exercise of an individual's agency to overcome these barriers, although this choice is not without its penalties. Identity Drawing on Bourdieu's ideas, Fuller (2009) adds to the theoretical understanding of structure and agency by considering how young people shape their educational identity and how this identity is often the result of messages reflected at them, for example, through grades, setting and gendered expectations. Social location is considered important but its role is complex. Her work considered the importance of understanding the ways that individuals identify within an academic discourse, a discourse that typically situates young people dichotomously; as those who will achieve and those that will not. Understanding the importance of areas such as self-efficacy, confidence and resilience in shaping educational identity at the level of agent and subsequently, educational attainment and aspirations, has been central to her most recent work. Notable sociologists of education See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Birthday_party.jpg] | [TOKENS: 112] |
File:Birthday party.jpg Summary Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by Quadell using CommonsHelper. suyash (talk). Licensing File history Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time. File usage The following 5 pages use this file: Global file usage The following other wikis use this file: Metadata This file contains additional information, probably added from the digital camera or scanner used to create or digitize it. If the file has been modified from its original state, some details may not fully reflect the modified file. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Space] | [TOKENS: 359] |
Contents Return to Space Return to Space is an American documentary film made for Netflix and directed by Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi. Its story follows Elon Musk's and SpaceX employees' two-decade mission to send NASA astronauts back to the International Space Station and revolutionize space travel. The film was released on April 7, 2022. Synopsis The film tells a story of SpaceX from their Falcon 1 and re-usable Falcon 9 to the Crew Dragon Demo-2, launched on 30 May 2020 with Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken aboard. Featuring Reception The film received mixed reviews. IndieWire called it an "Exasperating 2-Hour Commercial for Elon Musk"; a Wired review, meanwhile, points that the film "chronicles the company’s unlikely rise, but it avoids talking about its shortcomings". The review by Decider was more favourable, saying: "While a large part of Return to Space plays like a SpaceX promotional video, the meaningful way the film tells the story of a group of hopeful dreamers makes it more than worth your while." The review by Joe Morgenstern on the Wall Street Journal was also favourable while noting the promotional tone, writing: "In fact, it promotes the company quite effectively, and why not? Elon Musk’s aerospace venture has achieved remarkable things since it was founded two decades ago. The film is more than that, though. It’s a return to dramatic accounts of blastoffs, followed by soul-filling footage from beyond our sheltering atmosphere and implacable gravity; a portrait, by reflected light from fiery boosters, of one of Earth’s most curious (in every respect) overachievers; and a testament to failing upward—far, far upward." References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://techcrunch.com/events/tc-disrupt-2026/] | [TOKENS: 778] |
Last week to get up to $680 discount on your pass. REGISTER NOW. Last week to get up to $680 discount on your pass. REGISTER NOW. Last week to get up to $680 discount on your pass. REGISTER NOW. Last week to get up to $680 discount on your pass. REGISTER NOW. TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Disrupt is where you’ll find innovation for every stage of your startup journey. Whether you’re a budding founder with a revolutionary idea, a seasoned startup looking to scale, or an investor seeking the next big thing, Disrupt offers unparalleled resources, connections, and expert insights to propel your venture forward. Find innovation for every stage at Disrupt 2026 From idea to IPO, Disrupt 2026 will map out the path for startups to achieve their next major milestone. Looking to meet founders, connect with investors, seek advice, or land your next big role? Disrupt is the must-attend event to make it all happen in person. Disrupt is more than a startup launchpad — it’s a growth accelerator. Dive into sessions on scaling, sales, and leadership, and connect with the investors and tech experts who can help take your business to the next level. Tap into the wisdom of founders and tech titans at Disrupt. From actionable tips to hard-won lessons, they’ll share what works (and what doesn’t) to guide you as you build your own path forward. Past speakers Roelof Botha Managing Partner and Steward Sequoia Capital View Profile Managing Partner and Steward Sequoia Capital Mary Barra Chair and CEO General Motors View Profile Chair and CEO General Motors Denise Dresser Chief Executive Officer Slack from Salesforce View Profile Chief Executive Officer Slack from Salesforce Colin Kaepernick Founder and CEO Lumi and Super Bowl QB View Profile Founder and CEO Lumi and Super Bowl QB Vinod Khosla Founder Khosla Ventures View Profile Founder Khosla Ventures Matt Mullenweg Co-Founder / Founder and CEO WordPress / Automattic View Profile Co-Founder / Founder and CEO WordPress / Automattic Shaquille O'Neal NBA Superstar and Philanthropist Entrepreneur View Profile NBA Superstar and Philanthropist Entrepreneur Assaf Rappaport Co-Founder and CEO Wiz View Profile Co-Founder and CEO Wiz Serena Williams Founding & Managing Partner Serena Ventures View Profile Founding & Managing Partner Serena Ventures Reasons not to miss Disrupt Find your ticket match Save up to $680 on your ticket until February 27. Disrupt 2026 news and updates Platinum Partners Partnership Opportunities TechCrunch offers many ways for partners to engage directly with our attendees before, during, and after the event. If you’re interested in learning more about how your company can be part of the event, get in touch with our sales team below. Location 800 Howard St.San Francisco, CA 94103United States of America Upcoming TechCrunch Events Be the first to know when StrictlyVC events go live Save up to $300 with Super Early Bird rates Join 1,000+ founders and investors in Boston: REGISTER NOW In 2025, StrictlyVC sparked candid conversations on deep tech, real-world VC insights, startups, and scaling, while bringing together thousands of meaningful connections from the Bay Area to London and Athens. Join the 2026 waitlist to be the first to know when tickets go live at the lowest rate and to receive key event details. Seating is limited. JOIN WAITLIST Get the latest event announcements, special discounts and other event offers. By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice. Partner with TechCrunch TechCrunch offers many ways for partners to engage directly with our attendees before, during, and after the event. Get in touch with us to learn more. © 2024 Yahoo. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Zion] | [TOKENS: 1890] |
Contents Return to Zion The return to Zion (Hebrew: שִׁיבָת צִיּוֹן or שבי ציון, Shivat Tzion or Shavei Tzion, lit. 'Zion returnees') is an event recorded in Ezra–Nehemiah of the Hebrew Bible, in which the Jews of the Kingdom of Judah—subjugated by the Neo-Babylonian Empire—were freed from the Babylonian captivity following the Persian conquest of Babylon. In 539 BCE, the Persian king Cyrus the Great issued the Edict of Cyrus allowing the Jews to return to Jerusalem and the Land of Judah, which was made a self-governing Jewish province under the new Persian Empire. The Persian period marks the onset of the Second Temple period in Jewish history. Zerubabel, appointed as governor of Judah by the Persian king, oversaw the construction of the Second Temple. Later, prominent leaders like Nehemiah and Ezra emerged. Nehemiah's activities dated to the third quarter of the fifth century BCE, while the precise period of Ezra's activity remains a subject of debate. Their efforts to rebuild the social and spiritual life of the Jewish returnees in their ancestral homeland are chronicled in the biblical books named after them. These texts also document the interactions of the Jews with neighboring figures, including Sanballat the Horonite, likely the governor of Samaria, Tobiah the Ammonite, who likely owned lands in Ammon, and Geshem the Arabian, king of the Qedarites, all of whom opposed Nehemiah's efforts to rebuild Jerusalem. One of the significant achievements of the Persian period was the canonization of the Torah, a topic of enduring scholarly interest due to its profound impact on Western civilization. Traditionally attributed to Ezra, who presented the "Torah of Moses" to the people of Judah, possibly around 398 BCE, this process of creating a unified book of rules played an important role in fostering the distinctive identity of the Jews during this period. Babylonian texts, archaeological evidence, and population estimates suggest that only a small group of exiles, likely around 4,000, returned to Judah over several decades, contrary to the figure of 42,360 listed in Ezra 2. Babylonian exile The Neo-Babylonian Empire under the rule of Nebuchadnezzar II occupied the Kingdom of Judah between 597–586 BCE and destroyed the First Temple in Jerusalem. According to the Hebrew Bible, the last king of Judah, Zedekiah, was forced to watch his sons put to death, then his own eyes were put out and he was exiled to Babylon (2 Kings 25). Return to Zion According to the books of Ezra–Nehemiah, a number of decades later in 538 BCE, the Jews in Babylon were allowed to return to the Land of Judah, due to Cyrus's decree. Initially, around 50,000 Jews returned to the Land of Judah following the decree of Cyrus as described in Ezra, whereas some remained in Babylon. Later, an unknown number of exiles returned from Babylon with Ezra himself. The return of the deportees to Judah during the next 110 years is known as the return to Zion, an event by which Jews ever since have been inspired. The returnees settled in what became known as Yehud Medinata or Yehud. Yehud Medinata was a self-governing Jewish province under the rule of the Achaemenid Empire which even issued their own Yehud coinage inscribed with the three letters Y-H-D.[citation needed] Biblical account According to the books of Ezra–Nehemiah in the Hebrew Bible, the return to Zion occurred in several waves: those of Sheshbazzar, Zerubbabel, Ezra, and Nehemiah. The Book of Ezra first depicts the return of Sheshbazzar at the behest of the Persian King Cyrus in 538 BC, the first year after he conquered Babylon: 7 And King Cyrus took out all the vessels of the House of the Lord, which Nebuchadnezzar had taken out of Jerusalem and had placed them in the temple of his god; 8 Now Cyrus, the king of Persia, took them out by the hand of Mithredath the treasurer, and he counted them out to Sheshbazzar, the prince of Judah… 11 All the vessels of silver and gold were five thousand, four hundred; Sheshbazzar brought up everything when the exiles were brought up from Babylon to Jerusalem. — Book of Ezra 1:7–8,11 The second migration recounted in the Book of Ezra is that of Zerubbabel (either in 538 BC with the first wave or 520 BC, the second year of Darius I, when work resumed). According to the apocryphal book of 1 Esdras, this was the result of Zerubbabel's victory in a contest of wits under King Darius. This wave included 42,360 people, not including servants or handmaids. Among them, there were 24,144 ordinary men (57%) and 12,452 women and children (29%). There were also 4,289 priests (10%), 74 regular Levites, 128 singer Levites, 139 gatekeeper Levites, and 392 Nethinim temple assistants. The count was completed by 652 people of unknown ancestry and another unspecified 90. The addition of 7,337 servants and handmaids boosted the population to 49,697. Their working animals included 736 horses (one for every 68 people), 246 mules (one per 202), 435 camels (one per 114), and 6,720 donkeys (one per 7). The third migration was led by Ezra the scribe in the seventh year of Artaxerxes I (458 or 457 BC). According to the Talmud, he delayed his return to Judah to stay with his rabbi, Baruch ben Neriah, the renowned disciple of Jeremiah who was too old and weak to travel. Ezra returned with the approval of the Persian government and license to spend all donations to the Jerusalem holy temple. He was also permitted to transfer the returned holy vessels to the Temple, and a decree allocated them government money, wheat, wine and oil. In addition, all who served in the holy temple, the priests, Levites and Nethinim were given tax exemption, and Ezra was authorized to appoint magistrates and judges and to teach the law of God to the people of Judah, as well as judicial authority to impose penalties of confiscation, banishment or execution. The fourth migration was led by Nehemiah, who was granted a leave of absence to rebuild Jerusalem and repair its city walls in the twentieth year of Artaxerxes I (445 or 444 BC). He was given permission to cut down woods and was escorted by Persian troops. Due to economic distress in Judea, Nehemiah faced a public crisis during the repairing of the walls of Jerusalem. Nehemiah heard the Jewish people's complaints and got angry at the profiteering of the Jewish nobles and officials, especially those serving in the holy temple who were exempt from the heavy Persian taxes. Nehemiah assembled a public hearing and urged the nobles to restore confiscated fields and houses and forgive loans. He was the first to do so, proclaiming that he and his close associates would forgive their debts. He put the nobles under oath to fulfill their promises. On the twenty-fifth day of the month of Elul, 52 days after the work began, the whole wall was completed. Cyrus cylinder The biblical Book of Ezra includes two texts said to be decrees of Cyrus the Great allowing the deported Jews to return to their homeland after decades and ordering the Temple rebuilt. The differences in content and tone of the two decrees, one in Hebrew and one in Aramaic, have caused some scholars to question their authenticity. The Cyrus Cylinder, an ancient tablet on which is written a declaration in the name of Cyrus referring to restoration of temples and repatriation of exiled peoples, has often been taken as corroboration of the authenticity of the biblical decrees attributed to Cyrus, but other scholars point out that the cylinder's text is specific to Babylon and Mesopotamia and makes no mention of Judah or Jerusalem. Professor Lester L Grabbe asserted that the "alleged decree of Cyrus" regarding Judah, "cannot be considered authentic", but that there was a "general policy of allowing deportees to return and to re-establish cult sites". He also stated that archaeology suggests that the return was a "trickle" taking place over decades, rather than a single event. In the diaspora In the middle of the 5th century BCE, the exiled Judean communities experienced a significant national awakening. It has been demonstrated that the Judean residents of Nippur, the majority of whom had names of Babylonian origin, suddenly began giving their children Judean theophoric names. See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_device] | [TOKENS: 1305] |
Contents Mobile device Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra in a Samsung Store - example of mobile devices A mobile device or handheld device is a computer small enough to hold and operate in hand. Mobile devices are typically battery-powered and possess a flat-panel display and one or more built-in input devices, such as a touchscreen or keypad. Modern mobile devices often emphasize wireless networking, to both the Internet and to other devices in their vicinity, such as headsets or in-car entertainment systems, via Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cellular networks, or communication. Characteristics Device mobility can be viewed in the context of several qualities: Strictly speaking, many so-called mobile devices are not mobile. It is the host that is mobile, i.e., a mobile human host carries a non-mobile smartphone device. An example of a true mobile computing device, where the device itself is mobile, is a robot. Another example is an autonomous vehicle. There are three basic ways mobile devices can be physically bound to mobile hosts: Accompanied refers to an object being loosely bound and accompanying a mobile host, e.g., a smartphone can be carried in a bag or pocket but can easily be misplaced. Hence, mobile hosts with embedded devices such as an autonomous vehicle can appear larger than pocket-sized. The most common size of a mobile computing device is pocket-sized, but other sizes for mobile devices exist. Mark Weiser, known as the father of ubiquitous computing, referred to device sizes that are tab-sized, pad, and board sized, where tabs are defined as accompanied or wearable centimeter-sized devices, e.g. smartphones, phablets and tablets are defined as hand-held decimeter-sized devices. If one changes the form of the mobile devices in terms of being non-planar, one can also have skin devices and tiny dust-sized devices. Dust refers to miniaturized devices without direct HCI interfaces, e.g., micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS), ranging from nanometers through micrometers to millimeters. See also Smart dust. Skin: fabrics based upon light emitting and conductive polymers and organic computer devices. These can be formed into more flexible non-planar display surfaces and products such as clothes and curtains, see OLED display. Also, see smart device. Although mobility is often regarded as synonymous with having wireless connectivity, these terms are different. Not all network access by mobile users, applications, and devices needs to be via wireless networks and vice versa. Wireless access devices can be static and mobile users can move between wired and wireless hotspots such as in Internet cafés. Some mobile devices can be used as mobile Internet devices to access the Internet while moving, but they do not need to do this and many phone functions or applications are still operational even while disconnected from the Internet. What makes the mobile device unique compared to other technologies is the inherent flexibility in the hardware and software. Flexible applications include video chat, web browsing, payment systems, near field communication, audio recording etc. As mobile devices become ubiquitous, there will be an increase of services which include the use of the cloud. Although a common form of mobile device, a smartphone, has a display, another perhaps even more common form of smart computing device, the smart card, e.g., used as a bank card or travel card, does not have a display. This mobile device often has a CPU and memory but needs to connect or be inserted into a reader to display its internal data or state. Types There are many kinds of mobile devices, designed for different applications. They include, but are not limited to: History The history of the mobile device has been marked by increasing technological convergence. Early mobile devices—such as pocket calculators, portable media players, satellite navigation devices, and digital camera—excelled at their intended use but were not multifaceted. Personal digital assistants (PDAs) proliferated in the 1990s as a way to quickly write down notes, schedule business appointments, and set personal reminders, as a handheld supplement to bulkier laptops. During the same period, the mobile phone evolved from supporting voice communication only to accommodating text messaging, Internet connectivity, multimedia, and videotelephony. These feature phones eventually gave way to the modern smartphone, which combined all the aforementioned devices, and more, into one device. Since the late 2000s, smartphones have been the most common mobile device in the world, in terms of quantity sold, owing to their great convergence of technologies. Uses By the early 2010s, mobile devices began integrating sensors such as accelerometers, magnetometers, and gyroscopes, allowing the detection of orientation and motion. Mobile devices may provide biometric user authentication, such as face recognition or fingerprint recognition. Handheld devices such as enterprise digital assistants have become more rugged for use in mobile field management. This involves tasks such as digitizing notes, sending and receiving invoices, asset management, recording signatures, managing parts, and scanning barcodes and RFID tags. In 2009, developments in mobile collaboration systems enabled the use of handheld devices that combine video, audio, and on-screen drawing capabilities to enable multi-party conferencing in real-time, independent of location. Handheld computers are available in a variety of form factors, including smartphones, handheld PDAs, Ultra-mobile PC and tablet computers (Palm OS, WebOS). Users can watch television through the Internet by IPTV on some mobile devices. Mobile television receivers have existed since 1960, and, in the 21st-century, mobile phone providers began making television available on cellular phones. In the 2010s, mobile devices were observed to frequently include the ability to sync and share a variety of data despite the distance or specifications of the devices. In the medical field, mobile devices are quickly becoming essential tools for accessing clinical information such as drugs, treatment, and even medical calculations. Due to the popularity of mobile gaming, the gambling industry started offering casino games on mobile devices, which led to the inclusion of these devices in the anti-hazard legislature as devices that could potentially be used for illegal gambling. Additional potentially unlawful actions could encompass the utilization of mobile devices in disseminating explicit material involving minors. Moreover, the legitimate adult entertainment sector's incorporation of mobile apps and technology to advance its operations raises concerns. There is also a prospect of leveraging mobile devices to facilitate cross-border services, warranting regulatory attention. Within the military domain, mobile devices have introduced novel prospects for delivering training and educational resources to soldiers, irrespective of their stationed location. See also References Sources |
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Contents United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguous states border Canada to the north and Mexico to the south, with the semi-exclave of Alaska in the northwest and the archipelago of Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean. The United States also asserts sovereignty over five major island territories and various uninhabited islands in Oceania and the Caribbean.[j] It is a megadiverse country, with the world's third-largest land area[c] and third-largest population, exceeding 341 million.[k] Paleo-Indians first migrated from North Asia to North America at least 15,000 years ago, and formed various civilizations. Spanish colonization established Spanish Florida in 1513, the first European colony in what is now the continental United States. British colonization followed with the 1607 settlement of Virginia, the first of the Thirteen Colonies. Enslavement of Africans was practiced in all colonies by 1770 and supplied most of the labor for the Southern Colonies' plantation economy. Clashes with the British Crown began as a civil protest over the illegality of taxation without representation in Parliament and the denial of other English rights. They evolved into the American Revolution, which led to the Declaration of Independence and a society based on universal rights. Victory in the 1775–1783 Revolutionary War brought international recognition of U.S. sovereignty and fueled westward expansion, further dispossessing native inhabitants. As more states were admitted, a North–South division over slavery led the Confederate States of America to declare secession and fight the Union in the 1861–1865 American Civil War. With the United States' victory and reunification, slavery was abolished nationally. By the late 19th century, the U.S. economy outpaced the French, German and British economies combined. As of 1900, the country had established itself as a great power, a status solidified after its involvement in World War I. Following Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the U.S. entered World War II. Its aftermath left the U.S. and the Soviet Union as rival superpowers, competing for ideological dominance and international influence during the Cold War. The Soviet Union's collapse in 1991 ended the Cold War, leaving the U.S. as the world's sole superpower. The U.S. federal government is a representative democracy with a president and a constitution that grants separation of powers under three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial. The United States Congress is a bicameral national legislature composed of the House of Representatives (a lower house based on population) and the Senate (an upper house based on equal representation for each state). Federalism grants substantial autonomy to the 50 states. In addition, 574 Native American tribes have sovereignty rights, and there are 326 Native American reservations. Since the 1850s, the Democratic and Republican parties have dominated American politics. American ideals and values are based on a democratic tradition inspired by the American Enlightenment movement. A developed country, the U.S. ranks high in economic competitiveness, innovation, and higher education. Accounting for over a quarter of nominal global GDP, its economy has been the world's largest since about 1890. It is the wealthiest country, with the highest disposable household income per capita among OECD members, though its wealth inequality is highly pronounced. Shaped by centuries of immigration, the culture of the U.S. is diverse and globally influential. Making up more than a third of global military spending, the country has one of the strongest armed forces and is a designated nuclear state. A member of numerous international organizations, the U.S. plays a major role in global political, cultural, economic, and military affairs. Etymology Documented use of the phrase "United States of America" dates back to January 2, 1776. On that day, Stephen Moylan, a Continental Army aide to General George Washington, wrote a letter to Joseph Reed, Washington's aide-de-camp, seeking to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the Revolutionary War effort. The first known public usage is an anonymous essay published in the Williamsburg newspaper The Virginia Gazette on April 6, 1776. Sometime on or after June 11, 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote "United States of America" in a rough draft of the Declaration of Independence, which was adopted by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776. The term "United States" and its initialism "U.S.", used as nouns or as adjectives in English, are common short names for the country. The initialism "USA", a noun, is also common. "United States" and "U.S." are the established terms throughout the U.S. federal government, with prescribed rules.[l] "The States" is an established colloquial shortening of the name, used particularly from abroad; "stateside" is the corresponding adjective or adverb. "America" is the feminine form of the first word of Americus Vesputius, the Latinized name of Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci (1454–1512);[m] it was first used as a place name by the German cartographers Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringmann in 1507.[n] Vespucci first proposed that the West Indies discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492 were part of a previously unknown landmass and not among the Indies at the eastern limit of Asia. In English, the term "America" usually does not refer to topics unrelated to the United States, despite the usage of "the Americas" to describe the totality of the continents of North and South America. History The first inhabitants of North America migrated from Siberia approximately 15,000 years ago, either across the Bering land bridge or along the now-submerged Ice Age coastline. Small isolated groups of hunter-gatherers are said to have migrated alongside herds of large herbivores far into Alaska, with ice-free corridors developing along the Pacific coast and valleys of North America in c. 16,500 – c. 13,500 BCE (c. 18,500 – c. 15,500 BP). The Clovis culture, which appeared around 11,000 BCE, is believed to be the first widespread culture in the Americas. Over time, Indigenous North American cultures grew increasingly sophisticated, and some, such as the Mississippian culture, developed agriculture, architecture, and complex societies. In the post-archaic period, the Mississippian cultures were located in the midwestern, eastern, and southern regions, and the Algonquian in the Great Lakes region and along the Eastern Seaboard, while the Hohokam culture and Ancestral Puebloans inhabited the Southwest. Native population estimates of what is now the United States before the arrival of European colonizers range from around 500,000 to nearly 10 million. Christopher Columbus began exploring the Caribbean for Spain in 1492, leading to Spanish-speaking settlements and missions from what are now Puerto Rico and Florida to New Mexico and California. The first Spanish colony in the present-day continental United States was Spanish Florida, chartered in 1513. After several settlements failed there due to starvation and disease, Spain's first permanent town, Saint Augustine, was founded in 1565. France established its own settlements in French Florida in 1562, but they were either abandoned (Charlesfort, 1578) or destroyed by Spanish raids (Fort Caroline, 1565). Permanent French settlements were founded much later along the Great Lakes (Fort Detroit, 1701), the Mississippi River (Saint Louis, 1764) and especially the Gulf of Mexico (New Orleans, 1718). Early European colonies also included the thriving Dutch colony of New Nederland (settled 1626, present-day New York) and the small Swedish colony of New Sweden (settled 1638 in what became Delaware). British colonization of the East Coast began with the Virginia Colony (1607) and the Plymouth Colony (Massachusetts, 1620). The Mayflower Compact in Massachusetts and the Fundamental Orders of Connecticut established precedents for local representative self-governance and constitutionalism that would develop throughout the American colonies. While European settlers in what is now the United States experienced conflicts with Native Americans, they also engaged in trade, exchanging European tools for food and animal pelts.[o] Relations ranged from close cooperation to warfare and massacres. The colonial authorities often pursued policies that forced Native Americans to adopt European lifestyles, including conversion to Christianity. Along the eastern seaboard, settlers trafficked Africans through the Atlantic slave trade, largely to provide manual labor on plantations. The original Thirteen Colonies[p] that would later found the United States were administered as possessions of the British Empire by Crown-appointed governors, though local governments held elections open to most white male property owners. The colonial population grew rapidly from Maine to Georgia, eclipsing Native American populations; by the 1770s, the natural increase of the population was such that only a small minority of Americans had been born overseas. The colonies' distance from Britain facilitated the entrenchment of self-governance, and the First Great Awakening, a series of Christian revivals, fueled colonial interest in guaranteed religious liberty. Following its victory in the French and Indian War, Britain began to assert greater control over local affairs in the Thirteen Colonies, resulting in growing political resistance. One of the primary grievances of the colonists was the denial of their rights as Englishmen, particularly the right to representation in the British government that taxed them. To demonstrate their dissatisfaction and resolve, the First Continental Congress met in 1774 and passed the Continental Association, a colonial boycott of British goods enforced by local "committees of safety" that proved effective. The British attempt to then disarm the colonists resulted in the 1775 Battles of Lexington and Concord, igniting the American Revolutionary War. At the Second Continental Congress, the colonies appointed George Washington commander-in-chief of the Continental Army, and created a committee that named Thomas Jefferson to draft the Declaration of Independence. Two days after the Second Continental Congress passed the Lee Resolution to create an independent, sovereign nation, the Declaration was adopted on July 4, 1776. The political values of the American Revolution evolved from an armed rebellion demanding reform within an empire to a revolution that created a new social and governing system founded on the defense of liberty and the protection of inalienable natural rights; sovereignty of the people; republicanism over monarchy, aristocracy, and other hereditary political power; civic virtue; and an intolerance of political corruption. The Founding Fathers of the United States, who included Washington, Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, James Madison, Thomas Paine, and many others, were inspired by Classical, Renaissance, and Enlightenment philosophies and ideas. Though in practical effect since its drafting in 1777, the Articles of Confederation was ratified in 1781 and formally established a decentralized government that operated until 1789. After the British surrender at the siege of Yorktown in 1781, American sovereignty was internationally recognized by the Treaty of Paris (1783), through which the U.S. gained territory stretching west to the Mississippi River, north to present-day Canada, and south to Spanish Florida. The Northwest Ordinance (1787) established the precedent by which the country's territory would expand with the admission of new states, rather than the expansion of existing states. The U.S. Constitution was drafted at the 1787 Constitutional Convention to overcome the limitations of the Articles. It went into effect in 1789, creating a federal republic governed by three separate branches that together formed a system of checks and balances. George Washington was elected the country's first president under the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights was adopted in 1791 to allay skeptics' concerns about the power of the more centralized government. His resignation as commander-in-chief after the Revolutionary War and his later refusal to run for a third term as the country's first president established a precedent for the supremacy of civil authority in the United States and the peaceful transfer of power. In the late 18th century, American settlers began to expand westward in larger numbers, many with a sense of manifest destiny. The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 from France nearly doubled the territory of the United States. Lingering issues with Britain remained, leading to the War of 1812, which was fought to a draw. Spain ceded Florida and its Gulf Coast territory in 1819. The Missouri Compromise of 1820, which admitted Missouri as a slave state and Maine as a free state, attempted to balance the desire of northern states to prevent the expansion of slavery into new territories with that of southern states to extend it there. Primarily, the compromise prohibited slavery in all other lands of the Louisiana Purchase north of the 36°30′ parallel. As Americans expanded further into territory inhabited by Native Americans, the federal government implemented policies of Indian removal or assimilation. The most significant such legislation was the Indian Removal Act of 1830, a key policy of President Andrew Jackson. It resulted in the Trail of Tears (1830–1850), in which an estimated 60,000 Native Americans living east of the Mississippi River were forcibly removed and displaced to lands far to the west, causing 13,200 to 16,700 deaths along the forced march. Settler expansion as well as this influx of Indigenous peoples from the East resulted in the American Indian Wars west of the Mississippi. During the colonial period, slavery became legal in all the Thirteen colonies, but by 1770 it provided the main labor force in the large-scale, agriculture-dependent economies of the Southern Colonies from Maryland to Georgia. The practice began to be significantly questioned during the American Revolution, and spurred by an active abolitionist movement that had reemerged in the 1830s, states in the North enacted laws to prohibit slavery within their boundaries. At the same time, support for slavery had strengthened in Southern states, with widespread use of inventions such as the cotton gin (1793) having made slavery immensely profitable for Southern elites. The United States annexed the Republic of Texas in 1845, and the 1846 Oregon Treaty led to U.S. control of the present-day American Northwest. Dispute with Mexico over Texas led to the Mexican–American War (1846–1848). After the victory of the U.S., Mexico recognized U.S. sovereignty over Texas, New Mexico, and California in the 1848 Mexican Cession; the cession's lands also included the future states of Nevada, Colorado and Utah. The California gold rush of 1848–1849 spurred a huge migration of white settlers to the Pacific coast, leading to even more confrontations with Native populations. One of the most violent, the California genocide of thousands of Native inhabitants, lasted into the mid-1870s. Additional western territories and states were created. Throughout the 1850s, the sectional conflict regarding slavery was further inflamed by national legislation in the U.S. Congress and decisions of the Supreme Court. In Congress, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 mandated the forcible return to their owners in the South of slaves taking refuge in non-slave states, while the Kansas–Nebraska Act of 1854 effectively gutted the anti-slavery requirements of the Missouri Compromise. In its Dred Scott decision of 1857, the Supreme Court ruled against a slave brought into non-slave territory, simultaneously declaring the entire Missouri Compromise to be unconstitutional. These and other events exacerbated tensions between North and South that would culminate in the American Civil War (1861–1865). Beginning with South Carolina, 11 slave-state governments voted to secede from the United States in 1861, joining to create the Confederate States of America. All other state governments remained loyal to the Union.[q] War broke out in April 1861 after the Confederacy bombarded Fort Sumter. Following the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, many freed slaves joined the Union army. The war began to turn in the Union's favor following the 1863 Siege of Vicksburg and Battle of Gettysburg, and the Confederates surrendered in 1865 after the Union's victory in the Battle of Appomattox Court House. Efforts toward reconstruction in the secessionist South had begun as early as 1862, but it was only after President Lincoln's assassination that the three Reconstruction Amendments to the Constitution were ratified to protect civil rights. The amendments codified nationally the abolition of slavery and involuntary servitude except as punishment for crimes, promised equal protection under the law for all persons, and prohibited discrimination on the basis of race or previous enslavement. As a result, African Americans took an active political role in ex-Confederate states in the decade following the Civil War. The former Confederate states were readmitted to the Union, beginning with Tennessee in 1866 and ending with Georgia in 1870. National infrastructure, including transcontinental telegraph and railroads, spurred growth in the American frontier. This was accelerated by the Homestead Acts, through which nearly 10 percent of the total land area of the United States was given away free to some 1.6 million homesteaders. From 1865 through 1917, an unprecedented stream of immigrants arrived in the United States, including 24.4 million from Europe. Most came through the Port of New York, as New York City and other large cities on the East Coast became home to large Jewish, Irish, and Italian populations. Many Northern Europeans as well as significant numbers of Germans and other Central Europeans moved to the Midwest. At the same time, about one million French Canadians migrated from Quebec to New England. During the Great Migration, millions of African Americans left the rural South for urban areas in the North. Alaska was purchased from Russia in 1867. The Compromise of 1877 is generally considered the end of the Reconstruction era, as it resolved the electoral crisis following the 1876 presidential election and led President Rutherford B. Hayes to reduce the role of federal troops in the South. Immediately, the Redeemers began evicting the Carpetbaggers and quickly regained local control of Southern politics in the name of white supremacy. African Americans endured a period of heightened, overt racism following Reconstruction, a time often considered the nadir of American race relations. A series of Supreme Court decisions, including Plessy v. Ferguson, emptied the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments of their force, allowing Jim Crow laws in the South to remain unchecked, sundown towns in the Midwest, and segregation in communities across the country, which would be reinforced in part by the policy of redlining later adopted by the federal Home Owners' Loan Corporation. An explosion of technological advancement, accompanied by the exploitation of cheap immigrant labor, led to rapid economic expansion during the Gilded Age of the late 19th century. It continued into the early 20th, when the United States already outpaced the economies of Britain, France, and Germany combined. This fostered the amassing of power by a few prominent industrialists, largely by their formation of trusts and monopolies to prevent competition. Tycoons led the nation's expansion in the railroad, petroleum, and steel industries. The United States emerged as a pioneer of the automotive industry. These changes resulted in significant increases in economic inequality, slum conditions, and social unrest, creating the environment for labor unions and socialist movements to begin to flourish. This period eventually ended with the advent of the Progressive Era, which was characterized by significant economic and social reforms. Pro-American elements in Hawaii overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy; the islands were annexed in 1898. That same year, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam were ceded to the U.S. by Spain after the latter's defeat in the Spanish–American War. (The Philippines was granted full independence from the U.S. on July 4, 1946, following World War II. Puerto Rico and Guam have remained U.S. territories.) American Samoa was acquired by the United States in 1900 after the Second Samoan Civil War. The U.S. Virgin Islands were purchased from Denmark in 1917. The United States entered World War I alongside the Allies in 1917 helping to turn the tide against the Central Powers. In 1920, a constitutional amendment granted nationwide women's suffrage. During the 1920s and 1930s, radio for mass communication and early television transformed communications nationwide. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 triggered the Great Depression, to which President Franklin D. Roosevelt responded with the New Deal plan of "reform, recovery and relief", a series of unprecedented and sweeping recovery programs and employment relief projects combined with financial reforms and regulations. Initially neutral during World War II, the U.S. began supplying war materiel to the Allies of World War II in March 1941 and entered the war in December after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. Agreeing to a "Europe first" policy, the U.S. concentrated its wartime efforts on Japan's allies Italy and Germany until their final defeat in May 1945. The U.S. developed the first nuclear weapons and used them against the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, ending the war. The United States was one of the "Four Policemen" who met to plan the post-war world, alongside the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and China. The U.S. emerged relatively unscathed from the war, with even greater economic power and international political influence. The end of World War II in 1945 left the U.S. and the Soviet Union as superpowers, each with its own political, military, and economic sphere of influence. Geopolitical tensions between the two superpowers soon led to the Cold War. The U.S. implemented a policy of containment intended to limit the Soviet Union's sphere of influence; engaged in regime change against governments perceived to be aligned with the Soviets; and prevailed in the Space Race, which culminated with the first crewed Moon landing in 1969. Domestically, the U.S. experienced economic growth, urbanization, and population growth following World War II. The civil rights movement emerged, with Martin Luther King Jr. becoming a prominent leader in the early 1960s. The Great Society plan of President Lyndon B. Johnson's administration resulted in groundbreaking and broad-reaching laws, policies and a constitutional amendment to counteract some of the worst effects of lingering institutional racism. The counterculture movement in the U.S. brought significant social changes, including the liberalization of attitudes toward recreational drug use and sexuality. It also encouraged open defiance of the military draft (leading to the end of conscription in 1973) and wide opposition to U.S. intervention in Vietnam, with the U.S. totally withdrawing in 1975. A societal shift in the roles of women was significantly responsible for the large increase in female paid labor participation starting in the 1970s, and by 1985 the majority of American women aged 16 and older were employed. The Fall of Communism and the dissolution of the Soviet Union from 1989 to 1991 marked the end of the Cold War and left the United States as the world's sole superpower. This cemented the United States' global influence, reinforcing the concept of the "American Century" as the U.S. dominated international political, cultural, economic, and military affairs. The 1990s saw the longest recorded economic expansion in American history, a dramatic decline in U.S. crime rates, and advances in technology. Throughout this decade, technological innovations such as the World Wide Web, the evolution of the Pentium microprocessor in accordance with Moore's law, rechargeable lithium-ion batteries, the first gene therapy trial, and cloning either emerged in the U.S. or were improved upon there. The Human Genome Project was formally launched in 1990, while Nasdaq became the first stock market in the United States to trade online in 1998. In the Gulf War of 1991, an American-led international coalition of states expelled an Iraqi invasion force that had occupied neighboring Kuwait. The September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001 by the pan-Islamist militant organization al-Qaeda led to the war on terror and subsequent military interventions in Afghanistan and in Iraq. The U.S. housing bubble culminated in 2007 with the Great Recession, the largest economic contraction since the Great Depression. In the 2010s and early 2020s, the United States has experienced increased political polarization and democratic backsliding. The country's polarization was violently reflected in the January 2021 Capitol attack, when a mob of insurrectionists entered the U.S. Capitol and sought to prevent the peaceful transfer of power in an attempted self-coup d'état. Geography The United States is the world's third-largest country by total area behind Russia and Canada.[c] The 48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia have a combined area of 3,119,885 square miles (8,080,470 km2). In 2021, the United States had 8% of the Earth's permanent meadows and pastures and 10% of its cropland. Starting in the east, the coastal plain of the Atlantic seaboard gives way to inland forests and rolling hills in the Piedmont plateau region. The Appalachian Mountains and the Adirondack Massif separate the East Coast from the Great Lakes and the grasslands of the Midwest. The Mississippi River System, the world's fourth-longest river system, runs predominantly north–south through the center of the country. The flat and fertile prairie of the Great Plains stretches to the west, interrupted by a highland region in the southeast. The Rocky Mountains, west of the Great Plains, extend north to south across the country, peaking at over 14,000 feet (4,300 m) in Colorado. The supervolcano underlying Yellowstone National Park in the Rocky Mountains, the Yellowstone Caldera, is the continent's largest volcanic feature. Farther west are the rocky Great Basin and the Chihuahuan, Sonoran, and Mojave deserts. In the northwest corner of Arizona, carved by the Colorado River, is the Grand Canyon, a steep-sided canyon and popular tourist destination known for its overwhelming visual size and intricate, colorful landscape. The Cascade and Sierra Nevada mountain ranges run close to the Pacific coast. The lowest and highest points in the contiguous United States are in the State of California, about 84 miles (135 km) apart. At an elevation of 20,310 feet (6,190.5 m), Alaska's Denali (also called Mount McKinley) is the highest peak in the country and on the continent. Active volcanoes in the U.S. are common throughout Alaska's Alexander and Aleutian Islands. Located entirely outside North America, the archipelago of Hawaii consists of volcanic islands, physiographically and ethnologically part of the Polynesian subregion of Oceania. In addition to its total land area, the United States has one of the world's largest marine exclusive economic zones spanning approximately 4.5 million square miles (11.7 million km2) of ocean. With its large size and geographic variety, the United States includes most climate types. East of the 100th meridian, the climate ranges from humid continental in the north to humid subtropical in the south. The western Great Plains are semi-arid. Many mountainous areas of the American West have an alpine climate. The climate is arid in the Southwest, Mediterranean in coastal California, and oceanic in coastal Oregon, Washington, and southern Alaska. Most of Alaska is subarctic or polar. Hawaii, the southern tip of Florida and U.S. territories in the Caribbean and Pacific are tropical. The United States receives more high-impact extreme weather incidents than any other country. States bordering the Gulf of Mexico are prone to hurricanes, and most of the world's tornadoes occur in the country, mainly in Tornado Alley. Due to climate change in the country, extreme weather has become more frequent in the U.S. in the 21st century, with three times the number of reported heat waves compared to the 1960s. Since the 1990s, droughts in the American Southwest have become more persistent and more severe. The regions considered as the most attractive to the population are the most vulnerable. The U.S. is one of 17 megadiverse countries containing large numbers of endemic species: about 17,000 species of vascular plants occur in the contiguous United States and Alaska, and over 1,800 species of flowering plants are found in Hawaii, few of which occur on the mainland. The United States is home to 428 mammal species, 784 birds, 311 reptiles, 295 amphibians, and around 91,000 insect species. There are 63 national parks, and hundreds of other federally managed monuments, forests, and wilderness areas, administered by the National Park Service and other agencies. About 28% of the country's land is publicly owned and federally managed, primarily in the Western States. Most of this land is protected, though some is leased for commercial use, and less than one percent is used for military purposes. Environmental issues in the United States include debates on non-renewable resources and nuclear energy, air and water pollution, biodiversity, logging and deforestation, and climate change. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is the federal agency charged with addressing most environmental-related issues. The idea of wilderness has shaped the management of public lands since 1964, with the Wilderness Act. The Endangered Species Act of 1973 provides a way to protect threatened and endangered species and their habitats. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service implements and enforces the Act. In 2024, the U.S. ranked 35th among 180 countries in the Environmental Performance Index. Government and politics The United States is a federal republic of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The U.S. asserts sovereignty over five unincorporated territories and several uninhabited island possessions. It is the world's oldest surviving federation, and its presidential system of federal government has been adopted, in whole or in part, by many newly independent states worldwide following their decolonization. The Constitution of the United States serves as the country's supreme legal document. Most scholars describe the United States as a liberal democracy.[r] Composed of three branches, all headquartered in Washington, D.C., the federal government is the national government of the United States. The U.S. Constitution establishes a separation of powers intended to provide a system of checks and balances to prevent any of the three branches from becoming supreme. The three-branch system is known as the presidential system, in contrast to the parliamentary system where the executive is part of the legislative body. Many countries around the world adopted this aspect of the 1789 Constitution of the United States, especially in the postcolonial Americas. In the U.S. federal system, sovereign powers are shared between three levels of government specified in the Constitution: the federal government, the states, and Indian tribes. The U.S. also asserts sovereignty over five permanently inhabited territories: American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Residents of the 50 states are governed by their elected state government, under state constitutions compatible with the national constitution, and by elected local governments that are administrative divisions of a state. States are subdivided into counties or county equivalents, and (except for Hawaii) further divided into municipalities, each administered by elected representatives. The District of Columbia is a federal district containing the U.S. capital, Washington, D.C. The federal district is an administrative division of the federal government. Indian country is made up of 574 federally recognized tribes and 326 Indian reservations. They hold a government-to-government relationship with the U.S. federal government in Washington and are legally defined as domestic dependent nations with inherent tribal sovereignty rights. In addition to the five major territories, the U.S. also asserts sovereignty over the United States Minor Outlying Islands in the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean. The seven undisputed islands without permanent populations are Baker Island, Howland Island, Jarvis Island, Johnston Atoll, Kingman Reef, Midway Atoll, and Palmyra Atoll. U.S. sovereignty over the unpopulated Bajo Nuevo Bank, Navassa Island, Serranilla Bank, and Wake Island is disputed. The Constitution is silent on political parties. However, they developed independently in the 18th century with the Federalist and Anti-Federalist parties. Since then, the United States has operated as a de facto two-party system, though the parties have changed over time. Since the mid-19th century, the two main national parties have been the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. The former is perceived as relatively liberal in its political platform while the latter is perceived as relatively conservative in its platform. The United States has an established structure of foreign relations, with the world's second-largest diplomatic corps as of 2024[update]. It is a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council and home to the United Nations headquarters. The United States is a member of the G7, G20, and OECD intergovernmental organizations. Almost all countries have embassies and many have consulates (official representatives) in the country. Likewise, nearly all countries host formal diplomatic missions with the United States, except Iran, North Korea, and Bhutan. Though Taiwan does not have formal diplomatic relations with the U.S., it maintains close unofficial relations. The United States regularly supplies Taiwan with military equipment to deter potential Chinese aggression. Its geopolitical attention also turned to the Indo-Pacific when the United States joined the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue with Australia, India, and Japan. The United States has a "Special Relationship" with the United Kingdom and strong ties with Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, Israel, and several European Union countries such as France, Italy, Germany, Spain, and Poland. The U.S. works closely with its NATO allies on military and national security issues, and with countries in the Americas through the Organization of American States and the United States–Mexico–Canada Free Trade Agreement. The U.S. exercises full international defense authority and responsibility for Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and Palau through the Compact of Free Association. It has increasingly conducted strategic cooperation with India, while its ties with China have steadily deteriorated. Beginning in 2014, the U.S. had become a key ally of Ukraine. After Donald Trump was elected U.S. president in 2024, he sought to negotiate an end to the Russo-Ukrainian War. He paused all military aid to Ukraine in March 2025, although the aid resumed later. Trump also ended U.S. intelligence sharing with the country, but this too was eventually restored. The president is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces and appoints its leaders, the secretary of defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The Department of Defense, headquartered at the Pentagon near Washington, D.C., administers five of the six service branches, which are made up of the U.S. Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force, and Space Force. The Coast Guard is administered by the Department of Homeland Security in peacetime and can be transferred to the Department of the Navy in wartime. Total strength of the entire military is about 1.3 million active duty with an additional 400,000 in reserve. The United States spent $997 billion on its military in 2024, which is by far the largest amount of any country, making up 37% of global military spending and accounting for 3.4% of the country's GDP. The U.S. possesses 42% of the world's nuclear weapons—the second-largest stockpile after that of Russia. The U.S. military is widely regarded as the most powerful and advanced in the world. The United States has the third-largest combined armed forces in the world, behind the Chinese People's Liberation Army and Indian Armed Forces. The U.S. military operates about 800 bases and facilities abroad, and maintains deployments greater than 100 active duty personnel in 25 foreign countries. The United States has engaged in over 400 military interventions since its founding in 1776, with over half of these occurring between 1950 and 2019 and 25% occurring in the post-Cold War era. State defense forces (SDFs) are military units that operate under the sole authority of a state government. SDFs are authorized by state and federal law but are under the command of the state's governor. By contrast, the 54 U.S. National Guard organizations[t] fall under the dual control of state or territorial governments and the federal government; their units can also become federalized entities, but SDFs cannot be federalized. The National Guard personnel of a state or territory can be federalized by the president under the National Defense Act Amendments of 1933; this legislation created the Guard and provides for the integration of Army National Guard and Air National Guard units and personnel into the U.S. Army and (since 1947) the U.S. Air Force. The total number of National Guard members is about 430,000, while the estimated combined strength of SDFs is less than 10,000. There are about 18,000 U.S. police agencies from local to national level in the United States. Law in the United States is mainly enforced by local police departments and sheriff departments in their municipal or county jurisdictions. The state police departments have authority in their respective state, and federal agencies such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the U.S. Marshals Service have national jurisdiction and specialized duties, such as protecting civil rights, national security, enforcing U.S. federal courts' rulings and federal laws, and interstate criminal activity. State courts conduct almost all civil and criminal trials, while federal courts adjudicate the much smaller number of civil and criminal cases that relate to federal law. There is no unified "criminal justice system" in the United States. The American prison system is largely heterogenous, with thousands of relatively independent systems operating across federal, state, local, and tribal levels. In 2025, "these systems hold nearly 2 million people in 1,566 state prisons, 98 federal prisons, 3,116 local jails, 1,277 juvenile correctional facilities, 133 immigration detention facilities, and 80 Indian country jails, as well as in military prisons, civil commitment centers, state psychiatric hospitals, and prisons in the U.S. territories." Despite disparate systems of confinement, four main institutions dominate: federal prisons, state prisons, local jails, and juvenile correctional facilities. Federal prisons are run by the Federal Bureau of Prisons and hold pretrial detainees as well as people who have been convicted of federal crimes. State prisons, run by the department of corrections of each state, hold people sentenced and serving prison time (usually longer than one year) for felony offenses. Local jails are county or municipal facilities that incarcerate defendants prior to trial; they also hold those serving short sentences (typically under a year). Juvenile correctional facilities are operated by local or state governments and serve as longer-term placements for any minor adjudicated as delinquent and ordered by a judge to be confined. In January 2023, the United States had the sixth-highest per capita incarceration rate in the world—531 people per 100,000 inhabitants—and the largest prison and jail population in the world, with more than 1.9 million people incarcerated. An analysis of the World Health Organization Mortality Database from 2010 showed U.S. homicide rates "were 7 times higher than in other high-income countries, driven by a gun homicide rate that was 25 times higher". Economy The U.S. has a highly developed mixed economy that has been the world's largest nominally since about 1890. Its 2024 gross domestic product (GDP)[e] of more than $29 trillion constituted over 25% of nominal global economic output, or 15% at purchasing power parity (PPP). From 1983 to 2008, U.S. real compounded annual GDP growth was 3.3%, compared to a 2.3% weighted average for the rest of the G7. The country ranks first in the world by nominal GDP, second when adjusted for purchasing power parities (PPP), and ninth by PPP-adjusted GDP per capita. In February 2024, the total U.S. federal government debt was $34.4 trillion. Of the world's 500 largest companies by revenue, 138 were headquartered in the U.S. in 2025, the highest number of any country. The U.S. dollar is the currency most used in international transactions and the world's foremost reserve currency, backed by the country's dominant economy, its military, the petrodollar system, its large U.S. treasuries market, and its linked eurodollar. Several countries use it as their official currency, and in others it is the de facto currency. The U.S. has free trade agreements with several countries, including the USMCA. Although the United States has reached a post-industrial level of economic development and is often described as having a service economy, it remains a major industrial power; in 2024, the U.S. manufacturing sector was the world's second-largest by value output after China's. New York City is the world's principal financial center, and its metropolitan area is the world's largest metropolitan economy. The New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq, both located in New York City, are the world's two largest stock exchanges by market capitalization and trade volume. The United States is at the forefront of technological advancement and innovation in many economic fields, especially in artificial intelligence; electronics and computers; pharmaceuticals; and medical, aerospace and military equipment. The country's economy is fueled by abundant natural resources, a well-developed infrastructure, and high productivity. The largest trading partners of the United States are the European Union, Mexico, Canada, China, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, Vietnam, India, and Taiwan. The United States is the world's largest importer and second-largest exporter.[u] It is by far the world's largest exporter of services. Americans have the highest average household and employee income among OECD member states, and the fourth-highest median household income in 2023, up from sixth-highest in 2013. With personal consumption expenditures of over $18.5 trillion in 2023, the U.S. has a heavily consumer-driven economy and is the world's largest consumer market. The U.S. ranked first in the number of dollar billionaires and millionaires in 2023, with 735 billionaires and nearly 22 million millionaires. Wealth in the United States is highly concentrated; in 2011, the richest 10% of the adult population owned 72% of the country's household wealth, while the bottom 50% owned just 2%. U.S. wealth inequality increased substantially since the late 1980s, and income inequality in the U.S. reached a record high in 2019. In 2024, the country had some of the highest wealth and income inequality levels among OECD countries. Since the 1970s, there has been a decoupling of U.S. wage gains from worker productivity. In 2016, the top fifth of earners took home more than half of all income, giving the U.S. one of the widest income distributions among OECD countries. There were about 771,480 homeless persons in the U.S. in 2024. In 2022, 6.4 million children experienced food insecurity. Feeding America estimates that around one in five, or approximately 13 million, children experience hunger in the U.S. and do not know where or when they will get their next meal. Also in 2022, about 37.9 million people, or 11.5% of the U.S. population, were living in poverty. The United States has a smaller welfare state and redistributes less income through government action than most other high-income countries. It is the only advanced economy that does not guarantee its workers paid vacation nationally and one of a few countries in the world without federal paid family leave as a legal right. The United States has a higher percentage of low-income workers than almost any other developed country, largely because of a weak collective bargaining system and lack of government support for at-risk workers. The United States has been a leader in technological innovation since the late 19th century and scientific research since the mid-20th century. Methods for producing interchangeable parts and the establishment of a machine tool industry enabled the large-scale manufacturing of U.S. consumer products in the late 19th century. By the early 20th century, factory electrification, the introduction of the assembly line, and other labor-saving techniques created the system of mass production. In the 21st century, the United States continues to be one of the world's foremost scientific powers, though China has emerged as a major competitor in many fields. The U.S. has the highest research and development expenditures of any country and ranks ninth as a percentage of GDP. In 2022, the United States was (after China) the country with the second-highest number of published scientific papers. In 2021, the U.S. ranked second (also after China) by the number of patent applications, and third by trademark and industrial design applications (after China and Germany), according to World Intellectual Property Indicators. In 2025 the United States ranked third (after Switzerland and Sweden) in the Global Innovation Index. The United States is considered to be a world leader in the development of artificial intelligence technology. In 2023, the United States was ranked the second most technologically advanced country in the world (after South Korea) by Global Finance magazine. The United States has maintained a space program since the late 1950s, beginning with the establishment of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958. NASA's Apollo program (1961–1972) achieved the first crewed Moon landing with the 1969 Apollo 11 mission; it remains one of the agency's most significant milestones. Other major endeavors by NASA include the Space Shuttle program (1981–2011), the Voyager program (1972–present), the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes (launched in 1990 and 2021, respectively), and the multi-mission Mars Exploration Program (Spirit and Opportunity, Curiosity, and Perseverance). NASA is one of five agencies collaborating on the International Space Station (ISS); U.S. contributions to the ISS include several modules, including Destiny (2001), Harmony (2007), and Tranquility (2010), as well as ongoing logistical and operational support. The United States private sector dominates the global commercial spaceflight industry. Prominent American spaceflight contractors include Blue Origin, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and SpaceX. NASA programs such as the Commercial Crew Program, Commercial Resupply Services, Commercial Lunar Payload Services, and NextSTEP have facilitated growing private-sector involvement in American spaceflight. In 2023, the United States received approximately 84% of its energy from fossil fuel, and its largest source of energy was petroleum (38%), followed by natural gas (36%), renewable sources (9%), coal (9%), and nuclear power (9%). In 2022, the United States constituted about 4% of the world's population, but consumed around 16% of the world's energy. The U.S. ranks as the second-highest emitter of greenhouse gases behind China. The U.S. is the world's largest producer of nuclear power, generating around 30% of the world's nuclear electricity. It also has the highest number of nuclear power reactors of any country. From 2024, the U.S. plans to triple its nuclear power capacity by 2050. The United States' 4 million miles (6.4 million kilometers) of road network, owned almost entirely by state and local governments, is the longest in the world. The extensive Interstate Highway System that connects all major U.S. cities is funded mostly by the federal government but maintained by state departments of transportation. The system is further extended by state highways and some private toll roads. The U.S. is among the top ten countries with the highest vehicle ownership per capita (850 vehicles per 1,000 people) in 2022. A 2022 study found that 76% of U.S. commuters drive alone and 14% ride a bicycle, including bike owners and users of bike-sharing networks. About 11% use some form of public transportation. Public transportation in the United States is well developed in the largest urban areas, notably New York City, Washington, D.C., Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, and San Francisco; otherwise, coverage is generally less extensive than in most other developed countries. The U.S. also has many relatively car-dependent localities. Long-distance intercity travel is provided primarily by airlines, but travel by rail is more common along the Northeast Corridor, the only high-speed rail in the U.S. that meets international standards. Amtrak, the country's government-sponsored national passenger rail company, has a relatively sparse network compared to that of Western European countries. Service is concentrated in the Northeast, California, the Midwest, the Pacific Northwest, and Virginia/Southeast. The United States has an extensive air transportation network. U.S. civilian airlines are all privately owned. The three largest airlines in the world, by total number of passengers carried, are U.S.-based; American Airlines became the global leader after its 2013 merger with US Airways. Of the 50 busiest airports in the world, 16 are in the United States, as well as five of the top 10. The world's busiest airport by passenger volume is Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International in Atlanta, Georgia. In 2022, most of the 19,969 U.S. airports were owned and operated by local government authorities, and there are also some private airports. Some 5,193 are designated as "public use", including for general aviation. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has provided security at most major airports since 2001. The country's rail transport network, the longest in the world at 182,412.3 mi (293,564.2 km), handles mostly freight (in contrast to more passenger-centered rail in Europe). Because they are often privately owned operations, U.S. railroads lag behind those of the rest of the world in terms of electrification. The country's inland waterways are the world's fifth-longest, totaling 25,482 mi (41,009 km). They are used extensively for freight, recreation, and a small amount of passenger traffic. Of the world's 50 busiest container ports, four are located in the United States, with the busiest in the country being the Port of Los Angeles. Demographics The U.S. Census Bureau reported 331,449,281 residents on April 1, 2020,[v] making the United States the third-most-populous country in the world, after India and China. The Census Bureau's official 2025 population estimate was 341,784,857, an increase of 3.1% since the 2020 census. According to the Bureau's U.S. Population Clock, on July 1, 2024, the U.S. population had a net gain of one person every 16 seconds, or about 5400 people per day. In 2023, 51% of Americans age 15 and over were married, 6% were widowed, 10% were divorced, and 34% had never been married. In 2023, the total fertility rate for the U.S. stood at 1.6 children per woman, and, at 23%, it had the world's highest rate of children living in single-parent households in 2019. Most Americans live in the suburbs of major metropolitan areas. The United States has a diverse population; 37 ancestry groups have more than one million members. White Americans with ancestry from Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa form the largest racial and ethnic group at 57.8% of the United States population. Hispanic and Latino Americans form the second-largest group and are 18.7% of the United States population. African Americans constitute the country's third-largest ancestry group and are 12.1% of the total U.S. population. Asian Americans are the country's fourth-largest group, composing 5.9% of the United States population. The country's 3.7 million Native Americans account for about 1%, and some 574 native tribes are recognized by the federal government. In 2024, the median age of the United States population was 39.1 years. While many languages and dialects are spoken in the United States, English is by far the most commonly spoken and written. De facto, English is the official language of the United States, and in 2025, Executive Order 14224 declared English official. However, the U.S. has never had a de jure official language, as Congress has never passed a law to designate English as official for all three federal branches. Some laws, such as U.S. naturalization requirements, nonetheless standardize English. Twenty-eight states and the United States Virgin Islands have laws that designate English as the sole official language; 19 states and the District of Columbia have no official language. Three states and four U.S. territories have recognized local or indigenous languages in addition to English: Hawaii (Hawaiian), Alaska (twenty Native languages),[w] South Dakota (Sioux), American Samoa (Samoan), Puerto Rico (Spanish), Guam (Chamorro), and the Northern Mariana Islands (Carolinian and Chamorro). In total, 169 Native American languages are spoken in the United States. In Puerto Rico, Spanish is more widely spoken than English. According to the American Community Survey (2020), some 245.4 million people in the U.S. age five and older spoke only English at home. About 41.2 million spoke Spanish at home, making it the second most commonly used language. Other languages spoken at home by one million people or more include Chinese (3.40 million), Tagalog (1.71 million), Vietnamese (1.52 million), Arabic (1.39 million), French (1.18 million), Korean (1.07 million), and Russian (1.04 million). German, spoken by 1 million people at home in 2010, fell to 857,000 total speakers in 2020. America's immigrant population is by far the world's largest in absolute terms. In 2022, there were 87.7 million immigrants and U.S.-born children of immigrants in the United States, accounting for nearly 27% of the overall U.S. population. In 2017, out of the U.S. foreign-born population, some 45% (20.7 million) were naturalized citizens, 27% (12.3 million) were lawful permanent residents, 6% (2.2 million) were temporary lawful residents, and 23% (10.5 million) were unauthorized immigrants. In 2019, the top countries of origin for immigrants were Mexico (24% of immigrants), India (6%), China (5%), the Philippines (4.5%), and El Salvador (3%). In fiscal year 2022, over one million immigrants (most of whom entered through family reunification) were granted legal residence. The undocumented immigrant population in the U.S. reached a record high of 14 million in 2023. The First Amendment guarantees the free exercise of religion in the country and forbids Congress from passing laws respecting its establishment. Religious practice is widespread, among the most diverse in the world, and profoundly vibrant. The country has the world's largest Christian population, which includes the fourth-largest population of Catholics. Other notable faiths include Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, New Age, and Native American religions. Religious practice varies significantly by region. "Ceremonial deism" is common in American culture. The overwhelming majority of Americans believe in a higher power or spiritual force, engage in spiritual practices such as prayer, and consider themselves religious or spiritual. In the Southern United States' "Bible Belt", evangelical Protestantism plays a significant role culturally; New England and the Western United States tend to be more secular. Mormonism, a Restorationist movement founded in the U.S. in 1847, is the predominant religion in Utah and a major religion in Idaho. About 82% of Americans live in metropolitan areas, particularly in suburbs; about half of those reside in cities with populations over 50,000. In 2022, 333 incorporated municipalities had populations over 100,000, nine cities had more than one million residents, and four cities—New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston—had populations exceeding two million. Many U.S. metropolitan populations are growing rapidly, particularly in the South and West. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), average U.S. life expectancy at birth reached 79.0 years in 2024, its highest recorded level. This was an increase of 0.6 years over 2023. The CDC attributed the improvement to a significant fall in the number of fatal drug overdoses in the country, noting that "heart disease continues to be the leading cause of death in the United States, followed by cancer and unintentional injuries." In 2024, life expectancy at birth for American men rose to 76.5 years (+0.7 years compared to 2023), while life expectancy for women was 81.4 years (+0.3 years). Starting in 1998, life expectancy in the U.S. fell behind that of other wealthy industrialized countries, and Americans' "health disadvantage" gap has been increasing ever since. The Commonwealth Fund reported in 2020 that the U.S. had the highest suicide rate among high-income countries. Approximately one-third of the U.S. adult population is obese and another third is overweight. The U.S. healthcare system far outspends that of any other country, measured both in per capita spending and as a percentage of GDP, but attains worse healthcare outcomes when compared to peer countries for reasons that are debated. The United States is the only developed country without a system of universal healthcare, and a significant proportion of the population that does not carry health insurance. Government-funded healthcare coverage for the poor (Medicaid) and for those age 65 and older (Medicare) is available to Americans who meet the programs' income or age qualifications. In 2010, then-President Obama passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.[x] Abortion in the United States is not federally protected, and is illegal or restricted in 17 states. American primary and secondary education, known in the U.S. as K–12 ("kindergarten through 12th grade"), is decentralized. School systems are operated by state, territorial, and sometimes municipal governments and regulated by the U.S. Department of Education. In general, children are required to attend school or an approved homeschool from the age of five or six (kindergarten or first grade) until they are 18 years old. This often brings students through the 12th grade, the final year of a U.S. high school, but some states and territories allow them to leave school earlier, at age 16 or 17. The U.S. spends more on education per student than any other country, an average of $18,614 per year per public elementary and secondary school student in 2020–2021. Among Americans age 25 and older, 92.2% graduated from high school, 62.7% attended some college, 37.7% earned a bachelor's degree, and 14.2% earned a graduate degree. The U.S. literacy rate is near-universal. The U.S. has produced the most Nobel Prize winners of any country, with 411 (having won 413 awards). U.S. tertiary or higher education has earned a global reputation. Many of the world's top universities, as listed by various ranking organizations, are in the United States, including 19 of the top 25. American higher education is dominated by state university systems, although the country's many private universities and colleges enroll about 20% of all American students. Local community colleges generally offer open admissions, lower tuition, and coursework leading to a two-year associate degree or a non-degree certificate. As for public expenditures on higher education, the U.S. spends more per student than the OECD average, and Americans spend more than all nations in combined public and private spending. Colleges and universities directly funded by the federal government do not charge tuition and are limited to military personnel and government employees, including: the U.S. service academies, the Naval Postgraduate School, and military staff colleges. Despite some student loan forgiveness programs in place, student loan debt increased by 102% between 2010 and 2020, and exceeded $1.7 trillion in 2022. Culture and society The United States is home to a wide variety of ethnic groups, traditions, and customs. The country has been described as having the values of individualism and personal autonomy, as well as a strong work ethic and competitiveness. Voluntary altruism towards others also plays a major role; according to a 2016 study by the Charities Aid Foundation, Americans donated 1.44% of total GDP to charity—the highest rate in the world by a large margin. Americans have traditionally been characterized by a unifying political belief in an "American Creed" emphasizing consent of the governed, liberty, equality under the law, democracy, social equality, property rights, and a preference for limited government. The U.S. has acquired significant hard and soft power through its diplomatic influence, economic power, military alliances, and cultural exports such as American movies, music, video games, sports, and food. The influence that the United States exerts on other countries through soft power is referred to as Americanization. Nearly all present Americans or their ancestors came from Europe, Africa, or Asia (the "Old World") within the past five centuries. Mainstream American culture is a Western culture largely derived from the traditions of European immigrants with influences from many other sources, such as traditions brought by slaves from Africa. More recent immigration from Asia and especially Latin America has added to a cultural mix that has been described as a homogenizing melting pot, and a heterogeneous salad bowl, with immigrants contributing to, and often assimilating into, mainstream American culture. Under the First Amendment to the Constitution, the United States is considered to have the strongest protections of free speech of any country. Flag desecration, hate speech, blasphemy, and lese majesty are all forms of protected expression. A 2016 Pew Research Center poll found that Americans were the most supportive of free expression of any polity measured. Additionally, they are the "most supportive of freedom of the press and the right to use the Internet without government censorship". The U.S. is a socially progressive country with permissive attitudes surrounding human sexuality. LGBTQ rights in the United States are among the most advanced by global standards. The American Dream, or the perception that Americans enjoy high levels of social mobility, plays a key role in attracting immigrants. Whether this perception is accurate has been a topic of debate. While mainstream culture holds that the United States is a classless society, scholars identify significant differences between the country's social classes, affecting socialization, language, and values. Americans tend to greatly value socioeconomic achievement, but being ordinary or average is promoted by some as a noble condition as well. The National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities is an agency of the United States federal government that was established in 1965 with the purpose to "develop and promote a broadly conceived national policy of support for the humanities and the arts in the United States, and for institutions which preserve the cultural heritage of the United States." It is composed of four sub-agencies: Colonial American authors were influenced by John Locke and other Enlightenment philosophers. The American Revolutionary Period (1765–1783) is notable for the political writings of Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Paine, and Thomas Jefferson. Shortly before and after the Revolutionary War, the newspaper rose to prominence, filling a demand for anti-British national literature. An early novel is William Hill Brown's The Power of Sympathy, published in 1791. Writer and critic John Neal in the early- to mid-19th century helped advance America toward a unique literature and culture by criticizing predecessors such as Washington Irving for imitating their British counterparts, and by influencing writers such as Edgar Allan Poe, who took American poetry and short fiction in new directions. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller pioneered the influential Transcendentalism movement; Henry David Thoreau, author of Walden, was influenced by this movement. The conflict surrounding abolitionism inspired writers, like Harriet Beecher Stowe, and authors of slave narratives, such as Frederick Douglass. Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850) explored the dark side of American history, as did Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851). Major American poets of the 19th century American Renaissance include Walt Whitman, Melville, and Emily Dickinson. Mark Twain was the first major American writer to be born in the West. Henry James achieved international recognition with novels like The Portrait of a Lady (1881). As literacy rates rose, periodicals published more stories centered around industrial workers, women, and the rural poor. Naturalism, regionalism, and realism were the major literary movements of the period. While modernism generally took on an international character, modernist authors working within the United States more often rooted their work in specific regions, peoples, and cultures. Following the Great Migration to northern cities, African-American and black West Indian authors of the Harlem Renaissance developed an independent tradition of literature that rebuked a history of inequality and celebrated black culture. An important cultural export during the Jazz Age, these writings were a key influence on Négritude, a philosophy emerging in the 1930s among francophone writers of the African diaspora. In the 1950s, an ideal of homogeneity led many authors to attempt to write the Great American Novel, while the Beat Generation rejected this conformity, using styles that elevated the impact of the spoken word over mechanics to describe drug use, sexuality, and the failings of society. Contemporary literature is more pluralistic than in previous eras, with the closest thing to a unifying feature being a trend toward self-conscious experiments with language. Twelve American laureates have won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Media in the United States is broadly uncensored, with the First Amendment providing significant protections, as reiterated in New York Times Co. v. United States. The four major broadcasters in the U.S. are the National Broadcasting Company (NBC), Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), American Broadcasting Company (ABC), and Fox Broadcasting Company (Fox). The four major broadcast television networks are all commercial entities. The U.S. cable television system offers hundreds of channels catering to a variety of niches. In 2021, about 83% of Americans over age 12 listened to broadcast radio, while about 40% listened to podcasts. In the prior year, there were 15,460 licensed full-power radio stations in the U.S. according to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Much of the public radio broadcasting is supplied by National Public Radio (NPR), incorporated in February 1970 under the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967. U.S. newspapers with a global reach and reputation include The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and USA Today. About 800 publications are produced in Spanish. With few exceptions, newspapers are privately owned, either by large chains such as Gannett or McClatchy, which own dozens or even hundreds of newspapers; by small chains that own a handful of papers; or, in an increasingly rare situation, by individuals or families. Major cities often have alternative newspapers to complement the mainstream daily papers, such as The Village Voice in New York City and LA Weekly in Los Angeles. The five most-visited websites in the world are Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and ChatGPT—all of them American-owned. Other popular platforms used include X (formerly Twitter) and Amazon. In 2025, the U.S. was the world's second-largest video game market by revenue (after China). In 2015, the U.S. video game industry consisted of 2,457 companies that employed around 220,000 jobs and generated $30.4 billion in revenue. There are 444 game publishers, developers, and hardware companies in California alone. According to the Game Developers Conference (GDC), the U.S. is the top location for video game development, with 58% of the world's game developers based there in 2025. The United States is well known for its theater. Mainstream theater in the United States derives from the old European theatrical tradition and has been heavily influenced by the British theater. By the middle of the 19th century, America had created new distinct dramatic forms in the Tom Shows, the showboat theater and the minstrel show. The central hub of the American theater scene is the Theater District in Manhattan, with its divisions of Broadway, off-Broadway, and off-off-Broadway. Many movie and television celebrities have gotten their big break working in New York productions. Outside New York City, many cities have professional regional or resident theater companies that produce their own seasons. The biggest-budget theatrical productions are musicals. U.S. theater has an active community theater culture. The Tony Awards recognizes excellence in live Broadway theater and are presented at an annual ceremony in Manhattan. The awards are given for Broadway productions and performances. One is also given for regional theater. Several discretionary non-competitive awards are given as well, including a Special Tony Award, the Tony Honors for Excellence in Theatre, and the Isabelle Stevenson Award. Folk art in colonial America grew out of artisanal craftsmanship in communities that allowed commonly trained people to individually express themselves. It was distinct from Europe's tradition of high art, which was less accessible and generally less relevant to early American settlers. Cultural movements in art and craftsmanship in colonial America generally lagged behind those of Western Europe. For example, the prevailing medieval style of woodworking and primitive sculpture became integral to early American folk art, despite the emergence of Renaissance styles in England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The new English styles would have been early enough to make a considerable impact on American folk art, but American styles and forms had already been firmly adopted. Not only did styles change slowly in early America, but there was a tendency for rural artisans there to continue their traditional forms longer than their urban counterparts did—and far longer than those in Western Europe. The Hudson River School was a mid-19th-century movement in the visual arts tradition of European naturalism. The 1913 Armory Show in New York City, an exhibition of European modernist art, shocked the public and transformed the U.S. art scene. American Realism and American Regionalism sought to reflect and give America new ways of looking at itself. Georgia O'Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, and others experimented with new and individualistic styles, which would become known as American modernism. Major artistic movements such as the abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning and the pop art of Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein developed largely in the United States. Major photographers include Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen, Dorothea Lange, Edward Weston, James Van Der Zee, Ansel Adams, and Gordon Parks. The tide of modernism and then postmodernism has brought global fame to American architects, including Frank Lloyd Wright, Philip Johnson, and Frank Gehry. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan is the largest art museum in the United States and the fourth-largest in the world. American folk music encompasses numerous music genres, variously known as traditional music, traditional folk music, contemporary folk music, or roots music. Many traditional songs have been sung within the same family or folk group for generations, and sometimes trace back to such origins as the British Isles, mainland Europe, or Africa. The rhythmic and lyrical styles of African-American music in particular have influenced American music. Banjos were brought to America through the slave trade. Minstrel shows incorporating the instrument into their acts led to its increased popularity and widespread production in the 19th century. The electric guitar, first invented in the 1930s, and mass-produced by the 1940s, had an enormous influence on popular music, in particular due to the development of rock and roll. The synthesizer, turntablism, and electronic music were also largely developed in the U.S. Elements from folk idioms such as the blues and old-time music were adopted and transformed into popular genres with global audiences. Jazz grew from blues and ragtime in the early 20th century, developing from the innovations and recordings of composers such as W.C. Handy and Jelly Roll Morton. Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington increased its popularity early in the 20th century. Country music developed in the 1920s, bluegrass and rhythm and blues in the 1940s, and rock and roll in the 1950s. In the 1960s, Bob Dylan emerged from the folk revival to become one of the country's most celebrated songwriters. The musical forms of punk and hip hop both originated in the United States in the 1970s. The United States has the world's largest music market, with a total retail value of $15.9 billion in 2022. Most of the world's major record companies are based in the U.S.; they are represented by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Mid-20th-century American pop stars, such as Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley, became global celebrities and best-selling music artists, as have artists of the late 20th century, such as Michael Jackson, Madonna, Whitney Houston, and Mariah Carey, and of the early 21st century, such as Eminem, Britney Spears, Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift and Beyoncé. The United States has the world's largest apparel market by revenue. Apart from professional business attire, American fashion is eclectic and predominantly informal. Americans' diverse cultural roots are reflected in their clothing; however, sneakers, jeans, T-shirts, and baseball caps are emblematic of American styles. New York, with its Fashion Week, is considered to be one of the "Big Four" global fashion capitals, along with Paris, Milan, and London. A study demonstrated that general proximity to Manhattan's Garment District has been synonymous with American fashion since its inception in the early 20th century. A number of well-known designer labels, among them Tommy Hilfiger, Ralph Lauren, Tom Ford and Calvin Klein, are headquartered in Manhattan. Labels cater to niche markets, such as preteens. New York Fashion Week is one of the most influential fashion shows in the world, and is held twice each year in Manhattan; the annual Met Gala, also in Manhattan, has been called the fashion world's "biggest night". The U.S. film industry has a worldwide influence and following. Hollywood, a district in central Los Angeles, the nation's second-most populous city, is also metonymous for the American filmmaking industry. The major film studios of the United States are the primary source of the most commercially successful movies selling the most tickets in the world. Largely centered in the New York City region from its beginnings in the late 19th century through the first decades of the 20th century, the U.S. film industry has since been primarily based in and around Hollywood. Nonetheless, American film companies have been subject to the forces of globalization in the 21st century, and an increasing number of films are made elsewhere. The Academy Awards, popularly known as "the Oscars", have been held annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences since 1929, and the Golden Globe Awards have been held annually since January 1944. The industry peaked in what is commonly referred to as the "Golden Age of Hollywood", from the early sound period until the early 1960s, with screen actors such as John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe becoming iconic figures. In the 1970s, "New Hollywood", or the "Hollywood Renaissance", was defined by grittier films influenced by French and Italian realist pictures of the post-war period. The 21st century has been marked by the rise of American streaming platforms, which came to rival traditional cinema. Early settlers were introduced by Native Americans to foods such as turkey, sweet potatoes, corn, squash, and maple syrup. Of the most enduring and pervasive examples are variations of the native dish called succotash. Early settlers and later immigrants combined these with foods they were familiar with, such as wheat flour, beef, and milk, to create a distinctive American cuisine. New World crops, especially pumpkin, corn, potatoes, and turkey as the main course are part of a shared national menu on Thanksgiving, when many Americans prepare or purchase traditional dishes to celebrate the occasion. Characteristic American dishes such as apple pie, fried chicken, doughnuts, french fries, macaroni and cheese, ice cream, hamburgers, hot dogs, and American pizza derive from the recipes of various immigrant groups. Mexican dishes such as burritos and tacos preexisted the United States in areas later annexed from Mexico, and adaptations of Chinese cuisine as well as pasta dishes freely adapted from Italian sources are all widely consumed. American chefs have had a significant impact on society both domestically and internationally. In 1946, the Culinary Institute of America was founded by Katharine Angell and Frances Roth. This would become the United States' most prestigious culinary school, where many of the most talented American chefs would study prior to successful careers. The United States restaurant industry was projected at $899 billion in sales for 2020, and employed more than 15 million people, representing 10% of the nation's workforce directly. It is the country's second-largest private employer and the third-largest employer overall. The United States is home to over 220 Michelin star-rated restaurants, 70 of which are in New York City. Wine has been produced in what is now the United States since the 1500s, with the first widespread production beginning in what is now New Mexico in 1628. In the modern U.S., wine production is undertaken in all fifty states, with California producing 84 percent of all U.S. wine. With more than 1,100,000 acres (4,500 km2) under vine, the United States is the fourth-largest wine-producing country in the world, after Italy, Spain, and France. The classic American diner, a casual restaurant type originally intended for the working class, emerged during the 19th century from converted railroad dining cars made stationary. The diner soon evolved into purpose-built structures whose number expanded greatly in the 20th century. The American fast-food industry developed alongside the nation's car culture. American restaurants developed the drive-in format in the 1920s, which they began to replace with the drive-through format by the 1940s. American fast-food restaurant chains, such as McDonald's, Burger King, Chick-fil-A, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Dunkin' Donuts and many others, have numerous outlets around the world. The most popular spectator sports in the U.S. are American football, basketball, baseball, soccer, and ice hockey. Their premier leagues are, respectively, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, Major League Soccer, and the National Hockey League, All these leagues enjoy wide-ranging domestic media coverage and, except for the MLS, all are considered the preeminent leagues in their respective sports in the world. While most major U.S. sports such as baseball and American football have evolved out of European practices, basketball, volleyball, skateboarding, and snowboarding are American inventions, many of which have become popular worldwide. Lacrosse and surfing arose from Native American and Native Hawaiian activities that predate European contact. The market for professional sports in the United States was approximately $69 billion in July 2013, roughly 50% larger than that of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa combined. American football is by several measures the most popular spectator sport in the United States. Although American football does not have a substantial following in other nations, the NFL does have the highest average attendance (67,254) of any professional sports league in the world. In the year 2024, the NFL generated over $23 billion, making them the most valued professional sports league in the United States and the world. Baseball has been regarded as the U.S. "national sport" since the late 19th century. The most-watched individual sports in the U.S. are golf and auto racing, particularly NASCAR and IndyCar. On the collegiate level, earnings for the member institutions exceed $1 billion annually, and college football and basketball attract large audiences, as the NCAA March Madness tournament and the College Football Playoff are some of the most watched national sporting events. In the U.S., the intercollegiate sports level serves as the main feeder system for professional and Olympic sports, with significant exceptions such as Minor League Baseball. This differs greatly from practices in nearly all other countries, where publicly and privately funded sports organizations serve this function. Eight Olympic Games have taken place in the United States. The 1904 Summer Olympics in St. Louis, Missouri, were the first-ever Olympic Games held outside of Europe. The Olympic Games will be held in the U.S. for a ninth time when Los Angeles hosts the 2028 Summer Olympics. U.S. athletes have won a total of 2,968 medals (1,179 gold) at the Olympic Games, the most of any country. In other international competition, the United States is the home of a number of prestigious events, including the America's Cup, World Baseball Classic, the U.S. Open, and the Masters Tournament. The U.S. men's national soccer team has qualified for eleven World Cups, while the women's national team has won the FIFA Women's World Cup and Olympic soccer tournament four and five times, respectively. The 1999 FIFA Women's World Cup was hosted by the United States. Its final match was attended by 90,185, setting the world record for largest women's sporting event crowd at the time. The United States hosted the 1994 FIFA World Cup and will co-host, along with Canada and Mexico, the 2026 FIFA World Cup. See also Notes References This article incorporates text from a free content work. Licensed under CC BY-SA IGO 3.0 (license statement/permission). Text taken from World Food and Agriculture – Statistical Yearbook 2023, FAO, FAO. External links 40°N 100°W / 40°N 100°W / 40; -100 (United States of America) |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Space_Barons] | [TOKENS: 116] |
Contents The Space Barons The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos is a 2018 book by Christian Davenport. It covers the rise of the commercial space companies Blue Origin, led by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and SpaceX, led by PayPal and Tesla Motors founder Elon Musk. See also References This article about a book on outer space or spaceflight is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information. This article about a book on business is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by adding missing information. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylonian_captivity] | [TOKENS: 3096] |
Contents Babylonian captivity The Babylonian captivity or Babylonian exile was the period in Jewish history during which a large number of Judeans from the ancient Kingdom of Judah were exiled to Babylonia by the Neo-Babylonian Empire. The expulsions occurred in multiple waves: After the siege of Jerusalem in 597 BCE, around 7,000 individuals were exiled to Mesopotamia. Further expulsions followed the destruction of Jerusalem and Solomon's Temple in 587 BCE. Although the dates, numbers of expulsions, and numbers of exiles vary in the several biblical accounts, the following is a general outline of what occurred. After the Battle of Carchemish in 605 BCE, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II besieged Jerusalem, which resulted in tribute being paid by the Judean king Jehoiakim. In c. 601 BCE, Jehoiakim refused to pay further tribute, which led in 598/597 BCE to another siege of the city by Nebuchadnezzar II and culminated in the death of Jehoiakim and the exile to Babylonia of his successor Jeconiah, Jeconiah's court, and many others. In 587 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar II destroyed Jerusalem and exiled Jeconiah's successor Zedekiah and others. In 582 BCE, Nebuchadnezzar II exiled another group. The Bible recounts how after the fall of the Neo-Babylonian Empire to the Achaemenid Empire at the Battle of Opis in 539 BCE, exiled Judeans were permitted by the Persians to return to Judah. According to the biblical Book of Ezra, construction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem began c. 537 BCE in the new Persian province of Yehud Medinata. All of these events are considered significant to the developed history and culture of the Jewish people, and ultimately had a far-reaching impact on the development of Judaism. Archaeological studies have revealed that, although the city of Jerusalem was utterly destroyed, other parts of Judah continued to be inhabited during the period of the exile. Historical records from Mesopotamia and Jewish sources indicate that a significant portion of the Jewish population chose to remain in Mesopotamia. This decision led to the establishment of a sizable Jewish community in Mesopotamia known as the golah (dispersal), which persisted until modern times. The Iraqi Jewish, Persian Jewish, Georgian Jewish, Bukharian Jewish, and Mountain Jewish communities are believed to derive their ancestry in large part from these exiles; these communities have now largely emigrated to Israel. Biblical accounts of the exile In the late 7th century BCE, the Kingdom of Judah was a client state of the Assyrian empire. In the last decades of the century, Assyria was overthrown by Babylon, an Assyrian province. Egypt, fearing the sudden rise of the Neo-Babylonian empire, seized control of Assyrian territory up to the Euphrates river in Syria, but Babylon counter-attacked. In the process Josiah, the king of Judah, was killed in a battle with the Egyptians at the Battle of Megiddo (609 BCE). After the defeat of Pharaoh Necho's army by the Babylonians at Carchemish in 605 BCE, Jehoiakim began paying tribute to Nebuchadnezzar II of Babylon. Some of the young nobility of Judah were taken to Babylon. In the following years, the court of Jerusalem was divided into two parties, one supporting Egypt, the other Babylon. After Nebuchadnezzar was defeated in battle in 601 BCE by Egypt, Judah revolted against Babylon, culminating in a three-month siege of Jerusalem beginning in late 598 BCE. Jehoiakim, the king of Judah, died during the siege and was succeeded by his son Jehoiachin (also called Jeconiah) at the age of eighteen. The city fell on 2 Adar (March 16) 597 BCE, and Nebuchadnezzar pillaged Jerusalem and its Temple and took Jeconiah, his court and other prominent citizens (including the prophet Ezekiel) back to Babylon. Jehoiakim's uncle Zedekiah was appointed king in his place, but the exiles in Babylon continued to consider Jeconiah as their Exilarch, or rightful ruler. Despite warnings by Jeremiah and others of the pro-Babylonian party, Zedekiah revolted against Babylon and entered into an alliance with Pharaoh Hophra. Nebuchadnezzar returned, defeated the Egyptians, and again besieged Jerusalem, resulting in the city's destruction in 587 BCE. Nebuchadnezzar destroyed the city wall and the Temple, together with the houses of the most important citizens. Zedekiah and his sons were captured and the sons were executed in front of Zedekiah, who was then blinded and taken to Babylon with many others (Jer 52:10–11). Judah became a Babylonian province, called Yehud, putting an end to the independent Kingdom of Judah. Because of the missing years in the Jewish calendar, rabbinic sources place the date of the destruction of the First Temple at 3338 AM (423 BCE) or 3358 AM (403 BCE). The first governor appointed by Babylon was Gedaliah, a native Judahite; he encouraged the many Jews who had fled to surrounding countries such as Moab, Ammon and Edom to return, and he took steps to return the country to prosperity. Some time later, a surviving member of the royal family assassinated Gedaliah and his Babylonian advisors, prompting many refugees to seek safety in Egypt. By the end of the second decade of the 6th century BCE, in addition to those who remained in Judah, there were significant Jewish communities in Babylon and in Egypt; this was the beginning of the later numerous Jewish communities living permanently outside Judah in the Jewish Diaspora. According to the book of Ezra, the Persian Cyrus the Great ended the exile in 538 BCE, the year after he captured Babylon. The exile ended with the return under Zerubbabel the Prince (so-called because he was a descendant of the royal line of David) and Joshua the Priest (a descendant of the line of the former High Priests of the Temple) and their construction of the Second Temple in the period from 521 to 516 BCE. Archaeological and other extra-biblical evidence Nebuchadnezzar's siege of Jerusalem, his capture of its king, his appointment of another in his place, and the plundering of the city in 597 BCE are corroborated by a passage in the Babylonian Chronicles:: 293 In the seventh year, in the month of Kislev, the king of Akkad mustered his troops, marched to the Hatti-land, and encamped against the City of Judah and on the ninth day of the month of Adar he seized the city and captured the king. He appointed there a king of his own choice and taking heavy tribute brought it back to Babylon. Jehoiachin's Rations Tablets, describing ration orders for a captive King of Judah, identified with King Jeconiah, have been discovered during excavations in Babylon, in the royal archives of Nebuchadnezzar. One of the tablets refers to food rations for "Ya’u-kīnu, king of the land of Yahudu" and five royal princes, his sons. Nebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian forces returned in 589 BCE and rampaged through Judah, leaving clear archaeological evidence of destruction in many towns and settlements there.: 294 Clay ostraca from this period, referred to as the Lachish letters, were discovered during excavations; one, which was probably written to the commander at Lachish from an outlying base, describes how the signal fires from nearby towns were disappearing: "And may (my lord) be apprised that we are watching for the fire signals of Lachish according to all the signs which my lord has given, because we cannot see Azeqah." Archaeological finds from Jerusalem testify that virtually the whole city within the walls was burnt to rubble in 587 BCE and utterly destroyed.: 295 Archaeological excavations and surveys have enabled the population of Judah before the Babylonian destruction to be estimated to have been approximately 75,000. Taking the different biblical numbers of exiles at their highest, 20,000, this would mean that perhaps 25% of the population had been deported to Babylon, with the remaining majority staying in Judah.: 306 Although Jerusalem was destroyed, with large parts of the city remaining in ruins for 150 years, numerous other settlements in Judah continued to be inhabited, with no signs of disruption visible in archaeological studies.: 307 Archaeologist Avraham Faust suggests that between the deportations and executions caused by the Babylonians, plus the famines and epidemics that occurred during the war, the population of Judah may have been reduced to as little as 10% of what it had been in the time before deportations. In Mesopotamia, the exiled Judeans were relocated to agricultural settlements, with one notable settlement being Tel-Abib near the city of Nippur. Biblical scholar Niels Peter Lemche suggests that the exiled Judeans experienced a lifestyle scarcely less prosperous than what they were accustomed to in their homeland. However, there is evidence for hardship. For example, exiled Jewish leaders were suspected of national disloyalty and were reduced to peasantry, where they worked in agriculture and building projects and performed simple tasks such as farming, shepherding and fishing. This ended when the Persians conquered Babylon. Exiled Jewish commoners were nostalgic about Judah and, due to circumstance, were forced to abandon temple-based worship. They mostly worshipped in private homes and kept some religious traditions such as circumcision, Sabbath observance, reading of the Psalms and Law. The Cyrus Cylinder, an ancient tablet on which is written a declaration in the name of Cyrus referring to restoration of temples and repatriation of exiled peoples, has often been taken as corroboration of the authenticity of the biblical decrees attributed to Cyrus, but other scholars point out that the cylinder's text is specific to Babylon and Mesopotamia and makes no mention of Judah or Jerusalem. Professor Lester L. Grabbe asserted that the "alleged decree of Cyrus" regarding Judah, "cannot be considered authentic", but that there was a "general policy of allowing deportees to return and to re-establish cult sites". He also stated that archaeology suggests that the return was a "trickle" taking place over decades, rather than a single event. As part of the Persian Empire, the former Kingdom of Judah became the province of Judah (Yehud Medinata) with different borders, covering a smaller territory. The population of the province was greatly reduced from that of the kingdom; archaeological surveys suggesting a population of around 30,000 people in the 5th to 4th centuries BCE.: 308 A 2017 exhibition in Jerusalem displayed over 100 cuneiform tablets detailing trade in fruits and other commodities, taxes, debts, and credits accumulated between Jews forced or persuaded to move from Jerusalem by King Nebuchadnezzar around 600 BCE. The tablets included details on one exiled Judean family over four generations, all with Hebrew names. Most Jews who returned were poor Jews and either saw the exile as "spiritual regeneration" or "divine punishment for sins". One reason why wealthy Jews stayed in Mesopotamia includes economic opportunities, which were relatively uncommon in Judah. Exilic literature The exilic period was a rich source for Hebrew literature. Biblical depictions of the exile include Book of Jeremiah 39–43 (which saw the exile as a lost opportunity); the final section of 2 Kings (which portrays it as the temporary end of history); 2 Chronicles (in which the exile is the "Sabbath of the land"); and the opening chapters of Ezra, which records its end. Other works from or about the exile include the stories in Daniel 1–6, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, the "Story of the Three Youths" (1 Esdras 3:1–5:6), and the books of Tobit and Judith. The Book of Lamentations arose from the Babylonian captivity. The final redaction of the Pentateuch took place in the Persian period following the exile,: 310 and the Priestly source, one of its main sources, is primarily a product of the post-exilic period when the former Kingdom of Judah had become the Persian province of Yehud. Significance for Jewish culture In the Hebrew Bible, the captivity in Babylon is presented as a punishment for idolatry and disobedience to Yahweh. The Babylonian captivity had a number of serious effects on Judaism and Jewish culture. For example, the Imperial Aramaic alphabet, which eventually evolved into the Hebrew alphabet, was adopted during this period. Eventually the Aramaic-based Hebrew alphabet replaced the Paleo-Hebrew alphabet. This period saw the last high point of biblical prophecy in the person of Ezekiel, followed by the emergence of the central role of the Torah in Jewish life. According to many historical-critical scholars, the Torah was redacted during this time, and began to be regarded as the authoritative text for Jews. This period saw their transformation into an ethno-religious group who could survive without a central Temple. Israeli philosopher and Biblical scholar Yehezkel Kaufmann said "The exile is the watershed. With the exile, the religion of Israel comes to an end and Judaism begins." Notably, the period also saw the theological transition of the ancient Israelite religion among the captives from a monolatrous to a monotheistic faith system. This process coincided with the emergence of scribes and sages as Jewish leaders (see Ezra). Prior to exile, the people of Israel had been organized according to tribe. Afterwards, they were organized by smaller family groups. Only the Tribe of Levi continued in its temple role after the return. After this time, there were always sizable numbers of Jews living outside the Land of Israel; thus, it also marks the beginning of the "Jewish diaspora", unless this is considered to have begun with the Assyrian captivity.[citation needed] In rabbinic literature, biblical nations were used as metaphors for the Jewish diaspora, particularly Babylon based on the historical captivity of the 6th century BCE. Following the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, the names Rome and Edom temporarily became the standard terms. Chronology The following table is based on Rainer Albertz's work on Israel in exile, itself based mainly on biblical texts. (Alternative dates are possible.) See also References Further reading External links |
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[SOURCE: https://www.reddit.com/user/PlasmaTurtle21] | [TOKENS: 2338] |
Plasma u/PlasmaTurtle21 r/MinecraftCommands A place for all things about commands, command blocks and data-packs in vanilla Minecraft; to share, to question, to discuss, and more! Please read the pinned post before posting. Weekly visitors Weekly contributions r/MinecraftCommands r/MinecraftCommands A place for all things about commands, command blocks and data-packs in vanilla Minecraft; to share, to question, to discuss, and more! Please read the pinned post before posting. Weekly visitors Weekly contributions • Is there a way to stop redstone from changing the poses of an armor stand? PlasmaTurtle21 replied to voided_memory You can use: playanimation @e[type=armor_stand,name=Entity1] animation.armor_stand.no_pose a 0 b This command if used in a repeating command block will run an animation to an armorstand named Entity1 (though you can change it to be any name this is simply to specify a specific armorstand instead of all) and runs the no_pose animation constantly. I didn’t test it but it should work fine since it’s the armorstand animation on an armorstand though sometimes animations can make the entity model flicker between animations since it quickly changes the animations over and over when ran. There are a few ways to fix this or make it less prevalent though this I doubt will actually occur here but just a side note for future reference. Reply reply A place for all things about commands, command blocks and data-packs in vanilla Minecraft; to share, to question, to discuss, and more! Please read the pinned post before posting. A place for all things about commands, command blocks and data-packs in vanilla Minecraft; to share, to question, to discuss, and more! Please read the pinned post before posting. Is there a way to stop redstone from changing the poses of an armor stand? You can use: This command if used in a repeating command block will run an animation to an armorstand named Entity1 (though you can change it to be any name this is simply to specify a specific armorstand instead of all) and runs the no_pose animation constantly. I didn’t test it but it should work fine since it’s the armorstand animation on an armorstand though sometimes animations can make the entity model flicker between animations since it quickly changes the animations over and over when ran. There are a few ways to fix this or make it less prevalent though this I doubt will actually occur here but just a side note for future reference. r/Minecraft Minecraft community on Reddit Weekly visitors Weekly contributions r/Minecraft r/Minecraft Minecraft community on Reddit Weekly visitors Weekly contributions • Thanks to u/Thunderbolt1011, I’ve done it. PlasmaTurtle21 replied to King_Georgias For the visual application you could either detect when the player has a bow or when an arrow is shot(an arrow that doesn’t have a tag),or have it always displayed as blocking though at this point I would just use a different animation. For the visual application I used an invisible armorstand that would be given a shield and using the playanimation command it would do the shield blocking animation, where it would be teleported infront of the entity using the shield. For the actual blocking I found the most realistic to be teleporting the arrow either upwards and backwards from it’s facing position or teleporting it infront of the entity relative to where it’s facing though you could use both systems. Whenever the tp of the arrow occurred a chain command block would activate playing a sound and tagging that arrow. It’s easier than it sounds but there’s multiple ways to go about it. Makes for an interesting mob since you can only shoot them when they aren’t looking at the direction of the arrow. Reply reply Minecraft community on Reddit Minecraft community on Reddit Thanks to u/Thunderbolt1011, I’ve done it. For the visual application you could either detect when the player has a bow or when an arrow is shot(an arrow that doesn’t have a tag),or have it always displayed as blocking though at this point I would just use a different animation. For the visual application I used an invisible armorstand that would be given a shield and using the playanimation command it would do the shield blocking animation, where it would be teleported infront of the entity using the shield. For the actual blocking I found the most realistic to be teleporting the arrow either upwards and backwards from it’s facing position or teleporting it infront of the entity relative to where it’s facing though you could use both systems. Whenever the tp of the arrow occurred a chain command block would activate playing a sound and tagging that arrow. It’s easier than it sounds but there’s multiple ways to go about it. Makes for an interesting mob since you can only shoot them when they aren’t looking at the direction of the arrow. r/MinecraftCommands A place for all things about commands, command blocks and data-packs in vanilla Minecraft; to share, to question, to discuss, and more! Please read the pinned post before posting. Weekly visitors Weekly contributions r/MinecraftCommands r/MinecraftCommands A place for all things about commands, command blocks and data-packs in vanilla Minecraft; to share, to question, to discuss, and more! Please read the pinned post before posting. Weekly visitors Weekly contributions • Is there a way to stop redstone from changing the poses of an armor stand? PlasmaTurtle21 commented You can just use the playanimation command to set it’s animation state for the armorstand and have it always active on a repeating command block so it will keep that pose. Reply reply A place for all things about commands, command blocks and data-packs in vanilla Minecraft; to share, to question, to discuss, and more! Please read the pinned post before posting. A place for all things about commands, command blocks and data-packs in vanilla Minecraft; to share, to question, to discuss, and more! Please read the pinned post before posting. Is there a way to stop redstone from changing the poses of an armor stand? You can just use the playanimation command to set it’s animation state for the armorstand and have it always active on a repeating command block so it will keep that pose. r/Minecraft Minecraft community on Reddit Weekly visitors Weekly contributions r/Minecraft r/Minecraft Minecraft community on Reddit Weekly visitors Weekly contributions • Thanks to u/Thunderbolt1011, I’ve done it. PlasmaTurtle21 commented You could make the shield “actually function” in blocking arrows too with commands! I tried a concept of this a while back which worked out making it do a shielding animation when arrows are shot at it while also “blocking” it with the shield sound. Definitely something cool to explore if you want to make it even better. Reply reply Minecraft community on Reddit Minecraft community on Reddit Thanks to u/Thunderbolt1011, I’ve done it. You could make the shield “actually function” in blocking arrows too with commands! I tried a concept of this a while back which worked out making it do a shielding animation when arrows are shot at it while also “blocking” it with the shield sound. Definitely something cool to explore if you want to make it even better. r/VALORANT VALORANT™ is a free to play 5v5, character-based tactical shooter by Riot Games. Weekly visitors Weekly contributions r/VALORANT r/VALORANT VALORANT™ is a free to play 5v5, character-based tactical shooter by Riot Games. Weekly visitors Weekly contributions • I’m a hard-stuck bronze and I really want to get better. PlasmaTurtle21 commented Usually for most people reaction time isn’t a huge issue to their gameplay. You may not be focusing on your crosshair or mini map at the right times and get caught off guard leading to later reactions when you finally see the enemy. Other players may land shots on you when they immediately peak either because of peelers advantage, holding an on angle, they have information of where you are, you are close peeking from walls. These are all factors that can affect how gunfights will initially play out. Honestly never heard aim with your movement perhaps you mean aim while your strafing then shoot? I would say learning to counter strafe or move more during gunfights since it will help your survivalability when taking duels, you may easily get one tapped if you simply stand still or barely move since you are a still target. So moving is pretty important Reply reply VALORANT™ is a free to play 5v5, character-based tactical shooter by Riot Games. VALORANT™ is a free to play 5v5, character-based tactical shooter by Riot Games. I’m a hard-stuck bronze and I really want to get better. Usually for most people reaction time isn’t a huge issue to their gameplay. You may not be focusing on your crosshair or mini map at the right times and get caught off guard leading to later reactions when you finally see the enemy. Other players may land shots on you when they immediately peak either because of peelers advantage, holding an on angle, they have information of where you are, you are close peeking from walls. These are all factors that can affect how gunfights will initially play out. Honestly never heard aim with your movement perhaps you mean aim while your strafing then shoot? I would say learning to counter strafe or move more during gunfights since it will help your survivalability when taking duels, you may easily get one tapped if you simply stand still or barely move since you are a still target. So moving is pretty important r/minecraftbedrock everything Minecraft bedrock! Weekly visitors Weekly contributions r/minecraftbedrock r/minecraftbedrock everything Minecraft bedrock! Weekly visitors Weekly contributions • New to bedrock, creepers are insane PlasmaTurtle21 commented Maybe get some cats I suppose Reply reply everything Minecraft bedrock! everything Minecraft bedrock! New to bedrock, creepers are insane Maybe get some cats I suppose r/Minecraft Minecraft community on Reddit Weekly visitors Weekly contributions r/Minecraft r/Minecraft Minecraft community on Reddit Weekly visitors Weekly contributions • Sugar cane farm PlasmaTurtle21 commented Depends if they are on Java or Bedrock since bonemeal doesn’t work on sugarcane when used in Java, but it works in bedrock. Reply reply Minecraft community on Reddit Minecraft community on Reddit Sugar cane farm Depends if they are on Java or Bedrock since bonemeal doesn’t work on sugarcane when used in Java, but it works in bedrock. r/Minecraft Minecraft community on Reddit Weekly visitors Weekly contributions r/Minecraft r/Minecraft Minecraft community on Reddit Weekly visitors Weekly contributions • End Portal Spawned in Trial Chambers PlasmaTurtle21 replied to Emmer0-0 There isn’t a limit to the amount of bedrock strongholds like Java does so they have much more than 127 strongholds Reply reply Minecraft community on Reddit Minecraft community on Reddit End Portal Spawned in Trial Chambers There isn’t a limit to the amount of bedrock strongholds like Java does so they have much more than 127 strongholds Plasma Minecraft bedrock command creator, Advanced Chess player, CODM gamer, and Valorant player. Chill gamer and person I guess. 9,295 3492 post karma, 5803 comment karma Karma 3,020 Contributions 4 y Cake day: Oct 2, 2021 Reddit Age 27 Active in > Trophy Case |
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[SOURCE: https://techcrunch.com/events/tc-disrupt-2026/tickets] | [TOKENS: 1706] |
Last week to get up to $680 discount on your pass. REGISTER NOW. Last week to get up to $680 discount on your pass. REGISTER NOW. Last week to get up to $680 discount on your pass. REGISTER NOW. Last week to get up to $680 discount on your pass. REGISTER NOW. TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Tickets Have a team or community? Click here to explore our low group deals! For all investors All Attendee Pass perks, PLUS: For all roles and job titles For all founders All Attendee Pass perks, PLUS: For anyone in non-profit or military/government For students or recent grads. For all roles and job titles Group Tickets Save up to 15% for groups of 4-9.* Save on Attendee, Founder, Investor, and Non-Profit Passes Please complete this payment form to receive your 10+ passes. * Group/bundle savings and BOGO passes cannot be applied with other promotions/offers/discounts. Group/bundle savings only apply when a group of 4+ of the same pass type is purchased in one transaction. Savings cannot be applied to a bulk order of different pass types. Compare Passes Ticket FAQs You can receive a full refund of the ticket purchase price when you email your cancellation to events@techcrunch.com by July 31, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Amount will be refunded to the method of original purchase. After July 31, 2026, tickets are nonrefundable for any reason. Please note that it is TechCrunch policy that the name on attendees’ printed badge should match the name on the person’s government-issued photo ID. Nicknames or abbreviations are acceptable. Once a badge is printed, we cannot change the name on the badge beyond fixing spelling errors or changing for a nickname. 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Once you’ve purchased your tickets, you’ll receive an invoice in your ticket confirmation email. If you haven’t yet, then email events@techcrunch.com. If you receive a promotion or discount directly from Yahoo (e.g., through the TechCrunch website, newsletter, or a TechCrunch advertisement) on a pass type that you have already purchased, we will refund the total price difference, provided that: Refunds will be made to the original form of payment. Requests made after 7 days of the purchase date will not be considered or eligible. In addition, these types of requests cannot be mixed with other promotional discounts or offers. For clarity, we will not provide such refunds for offers made from third parties (e.g., event partners or sponsors, event speakers, or other event attendees). Ready to choose your Disrupt 2026 ticket? Click one of the options below to get started: Individual Passes Bundle Passes(Groups of 4-9) Group Passes(Groups of 10+) Founder?Click here Investor?Click here © 2024 Yahoo. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandhi_Jayanti] | [TOKENS: 342] |
Contents Gandhi Jayanti Gandhi Jayanti is a national holiday in India, celebrated annually on 2nd October to honour the birth of Mahatma Gandhi, one of the key leaders of the Indian independence movement and a pioneer of the philosophy and strategy of nonviolence. It is one of the three national holidays in India. In 2007, the United Nations General Assembly declared this day as the International Day of Non-Violence. Referred to as the "National Father" by Subhas Chandra Bose, Gandhi's principles of nonviolent resistance played a crucial role in India's successful struggle for independence from British colonial rule. Commemoration Gandhi Jayanti is observed in all of India's states and territories. It is marked by prayer services and tributes across India, including at Gandhi's memorial, Raj Ghat, in New Delhi where he was cremated. Popular activities include prayer meetings, commemorative ceremonies in different cities by colleges, local government institutions and socio-political institutions. On this day awards are granted for projects in schools and the community encouraging a nonviolent way of life as well as celebrating Gandhi's effort in the Indian independence movement. Gandhi's favourite bhajan (Hindu devotional song), "Raghupati Raghava Raja Ram", is usually sung in his memory. Statues of Mahatma Gandhi throughout the country are decorated with flowers and garlands, and some people avoid drinking alcohol or eating meat on the day. Public buildings, banks and post offices are closed. On the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi started the Swachh Bharat Mission. Its second phase started on Gandhi Jayanti 2021. Notes |
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[SOURCE: https://techcrunch.com/events/tc-disrupt-2026/exhibit/] | [TOKENS: 578] |
Last week to get up to $680 discount on your pass. REGISTER NOW. Last week to get up to $680 discount on your pass. REGISTER NOW. Last week to get up to $680 discount on your pass. REGISTER NOW. Last week to get up to $680 discount on your pass. REGISTER NOW. Exhibit at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 Limited quantity, first come, first-served 6′ exhibit tables Want to put your brand in front of 10,000 founders, VCs, and tech leaders? The Exhibitor Program at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 lets you set up, stand out, and seize game-changing connections. Secure prime exhibit space in the highest-traffic area of the event, the Expo Hall, and make your mark at the center of the startup ecosystem. Hear why exhibiting at Disrupt has been a game-changer for thousands of startups. Explore all the perks here. Book your exhibit table, unveil your innovation A limited number of 6′ exhibit tables at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 will be available on a first-come, first-served basis. Nonrefundable and nontransferable. Note: Today’s order will include reserving your exhibit table and five (5) all-access Exhibitor – Partner Passes. Sponsorship team will get in touch with you shortly after. Exhibitor benefits FAQs Any startup at any stage from any industry can apply for this program. With your package, you will receive: Your exhibit table includes five (5) Exhibitor – Partner and five (5) Expo+ Passes. You will receive the Exhibitor – Partner tickets upon booking this table. You’ll receive a promo code for the Expo+ Passes on a later date. While all team members will get access to the same benefits, only the founder(s) of the company will be able to access additional founder-only benefits, such as access to the Deal Flow Cafe, Speaker Q&A Sessions, Investor-to-Founder Networking, and Investor Opt-In List. This is all included in the price of your package, and you’ll designate your founders during onboarding once your application is approved. Yes, the Exhibitor Package is priced at a nonrefundable $12,500. This offer ends when the last exhibit table is sold out, or on September 25, 11:59 p.m. PT. Whoever comes first. Click here to book your exhibit table package. No, this Exhibit package is nonrefundable. No, all packages are nontransferable. No, it is one package per startup. No, all payments must be made by credit card and through our tickets page. Email exhibitors@techcrunch.com. Tables are limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis. Grab your exhibit table before your competitor does. © 2024 Yahoo. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_infrastructure] | [TOKENS: 1195] |
Contents Information infrastructure An information infrastructure is defined by Ole Hanseth (2002) as "a shared, evolving, open, standardized, and heterogeneous installed base" and by Pironti (2006) as all of the people, processes, procedures, tools, facilities, and technology which support the creation, use, transport, storage, and destruction of information. The notion of information infrastructures, introduced in the 1990s and refined during the following decade, has proven quite fruitful to the information systems (IS) field. It changed the perspective from organizations to networks and from systems to infrastructure, allowing for a global and emergent perspective on information systems. Information infrastructure is a technical structure of an organizational form, an analytical perspective or a semantic network. The concept of information infrastructure (II) was introduced in the early 1990s, first as a political initiative (Gore, 1993 & Bangemann, 1994), later as a more specific concept in IS research. For the IS research community, an important inspiration was Hughes' (1983) accounts of large technical systems, analyzed as socio-technical power structures (Bygstad, 2008). Information infrastructure are typically different from the previous generations of "large technological system" because these digital sociotechnical systems are considered generative, meaning they allow new users to connect with or even appropriate the system. Information infrastructure, as a theory, has been used to frame a number of extensive case studies (Star and Ruhleder 1996; Ciborra 2000; Hanseth and Ciborra 2007), and in particular to develop an alternative approach to IS design: "Infrastructures should rather be built by establishing working local solutions supporting local practices which subsequently are linked together rather than by defining universal standards and subsequently implementing them" (Ciborra and Hanseth 1998). It has later been developed into a full design theory, focusing on the growth of an installed base (Hanseth and Lyytinen 2008). Information infrastructures include the Internet, health systems and corporate systems. It is also consistent to include innovations such as Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace as excellent examples (Bygstad, 2008). Bowker has described several key terms and concepts that are enormously helpful for analyzing information infrastructure: imbrication, bootstrapping, figure/ground, and a short discussion of infrastructural inversion. "Imbrication" is an analytic concept that helps to ask questions about historical data. "Bootstrapping" is the idea that infrastructure must already exist in order to exist (2011). Definitions "Technological and non-technological elements that are linked" (Hanseth and Monteiro 1996). "Information infrastructures can, as formative contexts, shape not only the work routines, but also the ways people look at practices, consider them 'natural' and give them their overarching character of necessity. Infrastructure becomes an essential factor shaping the taken-for-grantedness of organizational practices" (Ciborra and Hanseth 1998). "The technological and human components, networks, systems, and processes that contribute to the functioning of the health information system" (Braa et al. 2007). "The set of organizational practices, technical infrastructure and social norms that collectively provide for the smooth operation of scientific work at a distance (Edwards et al. 2007). "A shared, evolving, heterogeneous installed base of IT capabilities developed on open and standardized interfaces" (Hanseth and Lyytinen 2008). Theories According to Star and Ruhleder, there are 8 dimensions of information infrastructures. Presidential Chair and Professor of Information Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, Christine L. Borgman argues information infrastructures, like all infrastructures, are "subject to public policy". In the United States, public policy defines information infrastructures as the "physical and cyber-based systems essential to the minimum operations of the economy and government" and connected by information technologies. Global Information Infrastructure (GII) Borgman says governments, businesses, communities, and individuals can work together to create a global information infrastructure which links "the world's telecommunication and computer networks together" and would enable the transmission of "every conceivable information and communication application." Currently, the Internet is the default global information infrastructure. Regional information infrastructure The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Telecommunications and Information Working Group (TEL) Program of Asian for Information and Communications Infrastructure. Association of South East Asian Nations, e-ASEAN Framework Agreement of 2000. National Information Infrastructure Act of 1993 National Information Infrastructure (NII). The National Research Council established CA*net in 1989 and the network connecting "all provincial nodes" was operational in 1990. The Canadian Network for the Advancement of Research, Industry and Education(CANARIE) was established in 1992 and CA*net was upgraded to a T1 connection in 1993 and T3 in 1995. By 2000, "the commercial basis for Canada's information infrastructure" was established, and the government ended its role in the project. In 1994, the European Union proposed the European Information Infrastructure.: European Information Infrastructure has evolved furthermore thanks to Martin Bangemann report and projects eEurope 2003+, eEurope 2005 and iIniciaive 2010. In 1995, American Vice President Al Gore asked USAID to help improve Africa's connection to the global information infrastructure. The USAID Leland Initiative (LI) was designed from June to September 1995, and implemented in on 29 September 1995. The Initiative was "a five-year $15 million US Government effort to support sustainable development" by bringing "full Internet connectivity" to approximately 20 African nations. The initiative had three strategic objectives: See also Notes References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_aspects_of_jealousy] | [TOKENS: 685] |
Contents Social aspects of jealousy 1800s: Martineau · Tocqueville · Marx · Spencer · Le Bon · Ward · Pareto · Tönnies · Veblen · Simmel · Durkheim · Addams · Mead · Weber · Du Bois · Mannheim · Elias The sociology of jealousy deals with cultural and social factors that influence what causes jealousy, how jealousy is expressed, and how attitudes toward jealousy change over time. Anthropologists such as Margaret Mead have shown that jealousy varies across cultures.[citation needed] Cultural learning can influence the situations that trigger jealousy and the manner in which jealousy is expressed. Attitudes toward jealousy can also change within a culture over time. For example, attitudes toward jealousy changed substantially during the 1960s and 1970s in the United States. People in the United States adopted much more negative views about jealousy.[citation needed] Causes of jealousy Margaret Mead reports a number of societies in which a man would offer his wife or daughter to others for sexual purposes, as well as cases in which "first wives" in polygamous societies would welcome additional wives as enhancing their prestige and lightening their work.[citation needed] She contrasts the Dobuans, whose lives were dominated by jealous guardianship of everything from wives to yams, with the Samoans, among whom jealousy was rare. It is possible that Mead's attribution of these differences to social arrangements is correct. Stearns similarly notes that the social history of jealousy among Americans shows a near absence of jealousy in the eighteenth century, when marriages were arranged by parents and close community supervision all but precluded extramarital affairs. As these social arrangements were gradually supplanted by the practice of dating several potential partners before marriage and by more fluid and anonymous living arrangements, jealousy as a social phenomenon correspondingly increased.[citation needed] Others have questioned Mead's findings about Samoa. Jealousy occurred far more frequently than Mead suggested and often resulted in violence. The Samoans have a word for such violence: fua.[citation needed] It may be that no society has the freedom from jealousy which Mead attributed to the Samoans. The incidence of jealousy may vary across cultures, but jealousy remains a cultural universal nonetheless. Changes in attitudes By the late 1960s and the 1970s, jealousy — particularly sexual jealousy — had come to be seen as both irrational and shameful in some quarters, particularly among advocates of free love. Advocates and practitioners of non-exclusive sexual relationships, believing that they ought not to be jealous, sought to banish or deny jealous reactions to their partners' sexual involvement with others. Many found this unexpectedly difficult, though for others, conscious blocking of the jealous reaction is relatively easy from the start, and over time the reaction can be effectively extinguished.[citation needed] Some studies suggest that jealousy may be reduced in multilateral relationships where there is a clear hierarchy of relationships or where expectations are otherwise fixed. (See Smith and Smith, Beyond Monogamy.) Contemporary practitioners of what is now called polyamory (multiple intimate relationships) for the most part treat jealousy as an inevitable problem, best handled by accommodation and communication.[citation needed] In mainstream society, although jealousy still carries connotations of insecurity, there is a greater tendency to accept it as a normal and expected reaction to a relationship threat. See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Orion-guide_dark.svg] | [TOKENS: 94] |
File:Orion-guide dark.svg Summary Licensing File history Click on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time. File usage The following 2 pages use this file: Global file usage The following other wikis use this file: Metadata This file contains additional information, probably added from the digital camera or scanner used to create or digitize it. If the file has been modified from its original state, some details may not fully reflect the modified file. |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_awakening] | [TOKENS: 1495] |
Contents False awakening A false awakening is a vivid scenario in which a person dreams that they have woken up, while still actually asleep. After a false awakening, subjects often dream they are performing their daily morning routine such as showering or eating breakfast. False awakenings, particularly those in which individuals dream they have awakened from a sleep that involved dreaming, take on aspects of a double dream or a dream within a dream. A classic example in fiction is the double false awakening of the protagonist in Gogol's Portrait (1835). Some studies have shown that false awakenings are frequently related to lucid dreaming, often transitioning into one another. The key distinction is that during a lucid dream, the dreamer recognizes they are dreaming, while in a false awakening, this awareness is absent. Related concepts A false awakening may occur following a dream or following a lucid dream (one in which the dreamer has been aware of dreaming). Particularly, if the false awakening follows a lucid dream, the false awakening may turn into a "pre-lucid dream", that is, one in which the dreamer may start to wonder if they are really awake and may or may not come to the correct conclusion. In a study by Harvard psychologist Deirdre Barrett, 2,000 dreams from 200 subjects were examined and it was found that false awakenings and lucidity were significantly more likely to occur within the same dream or within different dreams of the same night. False awakenings often preceded lucidity as a cue, but they could also follow the realization of lucidity, often losing it in the process. Because the mind still dreams after a false awakening, there may be more than one false awakening in a single dream. Subjects may dream they wake up, eat breakfast, brush their teeth, and so on; suddenly awake again in bed (still in a dream), begin morning rituals again, awaken again, and so forth.[citation needed] The philosopher Bertrand Russell claimed to have experienced "about a hundred" false awakenings in succession while coming around from a general anesthetic. Giorgio Buzzi suggests that false awakenings may indicate the occasional re-appearing of a vestigial (or anyway anomalous) REM sleep in the context of disturbed or hyperaroused sleep (lucid dreaming, sleep paralysis, or situations of high anticipation). This peculiar form of REM sleep permits the replay of unaltered experiential memories, thus providing a unique opportunity to study how waking experiences interact with the hypothesized predictive model of the world. In particular, it could permit to catch a glimpse of the protoconscious world without the distorting effect of ordinary REM sleep. In accordance with the proposed hypothesis, a high prevalence of false awakenings could be expected in children, whose "REM sleep machinery" might be less developed. Gibson's dream protoconsciousness theory states that false awakening is shaped on some fixed patterns depicting real activities, especially the day-to-day routine. False awakening is often associated with highly realistic environmental details of the familiar events like the day-to-day activities or autobiographic and episodic moments. Symptoms Certain aspects of life may be dramatized or out of place in false awakenings. Things may seem wrong: details, like the painting on a wall, not being able to talk or difficulty reading (reportedly, reading in lucid dreams is often difficult or impossible). Types Celia Green suggested a distinction should be made between two types of false awakening: Type 1 is the more common, in which the dreamer seems to wake up, but not necessarily in realistic surroundings; that is, not in their own bedroom. A pre-lucid dream may ensue. More commonly, dreamers will believe they have awakened, and then either genuinely wake up in their own bed or "fall back asleep" in the dream. A common false awakening is a "late for work" scenario. A person may "wake up" in a typical room, with most things looking normal, and realize they overslept and missed the start time at work or school. Clocks, if found in the dream, will show time indicating that fact. The resulting panic is often strong enough to truly awaken the dreamer (much like from a nightmare). Another common Type 1 example of false awakening can result in bedwetting. In this scenario, the dreamer has had a false awakening and while in the state of dream has performed all the traditional behaviors that precede urinating – arising from bed, walking to the bathroom, and sitting down on the toilet or walking up to a urinal. The dreamer may then urinate and suddenly wake up to find they have wet themselves. The Type 2 false awakening seems to be considerably less common. Green characterized it as follows: The subject appears to wake up in a realistic manner but to an atmosphere of suspense. ... The dreamer's surroundings may at first appear normal, and they may gradually become aware of something uncanny in the atmosphere, and perhaps of unwanted [unusual] sounds and movements, or they may "awake" immediately to a "stressed" and "stormy" atmosphere. In either case, the end result would appear to be characterized by feelings of suspense, excitement or apprehension. Charles McCreery draws attention to the similarity between this description and the description by the German psychopathologist Karl Jaspers (1923) of the so-called "primary delusionary experience" (a general feeling that precedes more specific delusory belief). Jaspers wrote: Patients feel uncanny and that there is something suspicious afoot. Everything gets a new meaning. The environment is somehow different—not to a gross degree—perception is unaltered in itself but there is some change which envelops everything with a subtle, pervasive and strangely uncertain light. ... Something seems in the air which the patient cannot account for, a distrustful, uncomfortable, uncanny tension invades him. McCreery suggests this phenomenological similarity is not coincidental and results from the idea that both phenomena, the Type 2 false awakening and the primary delusionary experience, are phenomena of sleep. He suggests that the primary delusionary experience, like other phenomena of psychosis such as hallucinations and secondary or specific delusions, represents an intrusion into waking consciousness of processes associated with stage 1 sleep. It is suggested that the reason for these intrusions is that the psychotic subject is in a state of hyperarousal, a state that can lead to what Ian Oswald called "microsleeps" in waking life. Other researchers doubt that these are clearly distinguished types, as opposed to being points on a subtle spectrum. Experimental descriptions The clinical and neurophysiological descriptions of false awakening are rare. One notable report by Takeuchi et al., was considered by some experts as a case of false awakening. It depicts a hypnagogic hallucination of an unpleasant and fearful feeling of presence in sleeping lab with perception of having risen from the bed. The polysomnography showed abundant trains of alpha rhythm on EEG (sometimes blocked by REMs mixed with slow eye movements and low muscle tone). Conversely, the two experiences of FA monitored here were close to regular REM sleep. Even quantitative analysis clearly shows theta waves predominantly, suggesting that these two experiences are a product of a dreaming rather than a fully conscious brain. The clinical and neurophysiological characteristics of false awakening are See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculations] | [TOKENS: 294] |
Contents Calculation Page version status This is an accepted version of this page A calculation is a deliberate mathematical process that transforms a plurality of inputs into a singular or plurality of outputs, known also as a result or results. The term is used in a variety of senses, from the very definite arithmetical calculation of using an algorithm, to the vague heuristics of calculating a strategy in a competition, or calculating the chance of a successful relationship between two people. For example, multiplying 7 by 6 is a simple algorithmic calculation. Extracting the square root or the cube root of a number using mathematical models is a more complex algorithmic calculation. Statistical estimations of the likely election results from opinion polls also involve algorithmic calculations, but produces ranges of possibilities rather than exact answers. To calculate means to determine mathematically in the case of a number or amount, or in the case of an abstract problem to deduce the answer using logic, reason or common sense. The English word derives from the Latin calculus, which originally meant a pebble (from Latin calx), for instance the small stones used as a counters on an abacus (Latin: abacus, Greek: ἄβαξ, romanized: abax). The abacus was an instrument used by Greeks and Romans for arithmetic calculations, preceding the slide-rule and the electronic calculator, and consisted of perforated pebbles sliding on iron bars. See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template_talk:Elon_Musk_series] | [TOKENS: 217] |
Contents Template talk:Elon Musk series This information should be about Elon Musk and not about the Tesla company. This information should be about Elon Musk and not about the Tesla company. Many links about the company called Tesla. There are links that focus on Tesla and not on the person (Elon Musk). Relevancy of some related parts of the Template. Related part mentions TSLAQ and Criticism of Tesla not sure how that has any relevancy outside of Tesla. Also QRep2020 is the creator of TSLAQ so probably not surprising he wants to have his page being realted. I can see it's been removed before until QRep2020 undid it again. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Warbayx (talk • contribs) 14:08, 27 March 2022 (UTC)[reply] Templete Use How can I use the Elon Musk Template for another person? Is it easy to do? Señor Jakob (talk) 04:13, 17 July 2023 (UTC)[reply] |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociology_of_the_family] | [TOKENS: 10227] |
Contents Sociology of the family 1800s: Martineau · Tocqueville · Marx · Spencer · Le Bon · Ward · Pareto · Tönnies · Veblen · Simmel · Durkheim · Addams · Mead · Weber · Du Bois · Mannheim · Elias Sociology of the family is a subfield of sociology in which researchers and academics study family structure as a social institution and unit of socialization from various sociological perspectives. It can be seen as an example of patterned social relations and group dynamics. Main areas of focus Methodology Quantitative studies in family sociology usually rely on data from survey research, or official [[Vital statistics (government records) |vital statistics]] and national census surveys. For example, in the United States, the national census occurs every 10 years, supplemented by the American Community Survey, the Current Population Survey and other surveys in between. These are conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau. Their data provides statistics on trends in household and family composition, and is reported in the Families and Living Arrangements series. This includes childcare, children, child support, families and households, fertility, grandparents and grandchildren, marriage and divorce, and same-sex couples. Another method is ethnographic or participatory observation research of families, which usually reduces the sample size to have a more intimate analysis of the conjugal or other family structure. In general, a qualitative approach to research is an excellent way to investigate group dynamics and family relationships. Specifically, qualitative research on the topic of families is particularly useful when looking at: 1) deeper meanings about family interactions and reklationships 2) learning more about the insider views about relational processes and observing interactions 3) looking at the family from within a greater context and 4) providing a voice for marginalized family members (e.g. case of abuse). Often, qualitative data is able to provide ample data that is rich and meaningful, especially for structurally diverse families. Sociology of interracial intimacy The construction of race in Western society and, to a degree, globally, has led to a distinct view of interracial intimacy. Although interracial relationships and marriages have become far more popular and socially acceptable in the United States and Western Europe since the Civil Rights era, these unions continue to be viewed with less than total acceptance by significant portions of the population. More historically, American Families by Stephanie Coontz treats the difficulties these couples went through during the time before Loving v. Virginia, when interracial marriage bans were declared unconstitutional. These bans functioned to enforce the one-drop rule and reenforce identity and privilege. Internationally, the far right continues to promote ideas of racial purity by working against the normalization of interracial couples and families. Pre-modern family life and religious discourse Historically, religious discourses have played a significant role in constituting family members and constructing particular forms of behavior in families, and religion has been particularly important in discourses on female sexuality. An example of the role of religion in this respect was the 'witchcraft craze' in medieval Europe. According to Turner, this was a device to regulate the behavior of women, and the attack on women as witches was principally "a critique of their sexuality". "Women were closely associated with witchcraft, because it was argued that they were particularly susceptible to the sexual advances of the devil. ... Women were seen to be irrational, emotional and lacking in self-restraint; they were especially vulnerable to satanic temptation." Turner argues that attempts to regulate female sexuality through religious discourse have, in the case of Western Europe, to be understood in the context of concerns about managing private property and ensuring its continuity. Thus, for the land-owning aristocracy, the point of marriage was to produce a male heir to the property of the household. Since child mortality was common, women had to be more or less continuously pregnant during their marriage to guarantee a living male heir. Furthermore, this heir had to be legitimate, if disputes over inheritance were to be avoided. This legitimacy could only be ensured by the heads of households marrying virgins and ensuring the chastity of their wives for the duration of the marriage. Equally, daughters had to be sexually pure if they were to be eligible for marriage to other property-holding families. Such marriages were prompted solely by the need to produce children and had none of the elements of eroticism and sexual compatibility of contemporary marriages. In pre-modern Europe, these interests were reflected in the character of marriages. They were private, arranged contracts that could be easily dissolved in the event of child production being compromised by the woman's infertility or infidelity. With the entry of the Church into marriage arrangements, different definitions of marriage emerged. Lifelong marriages were demanded, but with a concern to regulate sexuality, particularly the sexuality of women. Sociology of marriage Judeo-Christian belief system marriage is modeled after the Genesis story of Adam and Eve and its framework of a lifetime commitment between man and woman. The married couple produces children, constituting the nuclear family. Some sociologists now dispute the degree to which this idealized arrangement has and does reflect the true structure of families in American society. In her 1995 article The American Family and the Nostalgia Trap, sociologist Stephanie Coontz first posited that the American family has always been defined first and foremost by its economic needs. For instance, in colonial times families often relied on slaves or indentured servants to support themselves economically. The modern "breadwinner–homemaker model", argues Coontz, then has little historical basis. Only in the 1950s did the myth of the happy, nuclear family as the correct family structure arise. Family structure is changing drastically and there is a vast variety of different family structures: "The modern family is increasingly complex and has changed profoundly, with greater acceptance for unmarried cohabitation, divorce, single-parent families, same-sex partnerships and complex extended family relations. Grandparents are also doing their bit." Yet Coontz argues in Marriage, A History that during the 20th century, marriages have become increasingly unstable in the United States as individuals have begun to seek unions for the ideals of love and affection rather than social or economic expediency. This transition has blurred the division of labor within the breadwinner–homemaker model, such that maintenance of the household and childcare, called the "second shift", are now topics for debate between marital partners. Sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild argues in The Second Shift that despite changes in perceptions of the purpose of marriage and the economic foundations for marriage, women continue to do the bulk of care work to the detriment of the American family. Hochschild illustrates the ways in which an unequal division of the second shift undermines family welfare by reducing marital equality and spousal satisfaction. Today we see a modified version of a homemaker and breadwinner marriage where the woman adopts a breadwinner role but is still expected to take care of the home. This is considered to be a neo-traditionalist, where one believes that a woman is expected to work if she desires but only if it does not interfere with her real domestic job at home. Consequently, this forces women into disadvantaged career opportunities that are structured around the primary obligation to be a homemaker and reasserts the gender labor market inequality. Families and marriage have increasingly become areas where gender matters. However, it is important to note that gender differences in marriage have too often been perceived as merely an "individual struggle and depoliticized by reducing social inequalities to differences".: 422 There are many theoretical models to describe how people determine whom to marry. An important gender-focused approach is an intersectional approach that combines education level and gender. Men and women operate in a "marriage market" that is influenced by many competing factors. One of the most decisive factors is education level. Studies have shown that men and women tend to marry partners that have attained a level of education similar to their own. In the study by Bruze, Svarer, and Weiss, low education is defined as a high-school education or less, medium education is defined as vocational education, and high education is defined as a college education (2015). Marriages depend on the expectations of two people and are "formed and terminated" based on those expectations. Consequently, individuals "are selected into and out of the marriage market on the basis of their education". The most distinct marital trend is that men with low education are slowly selected out of the marriage market, instead remaining single. The driving force behind this process is that a marriage in which both partners or only the husband have low education end with divorce at a substantially higher rate than marriages where both partners or the husband do not have low education. Young women with medium education levels tend to have the highest rates of marriage. Highly educated men tend to marry highly educated women. Moreover, men and women who have attained high levels of education delay marriage past the age when other individuals typically marry. This trend becomes stronger with age: the proportion of men with high educations who are married to women with similarly high educations reaches 64% when the men are 46 years old. Another important intersectional factor to consider in relation to gender and marriage is marriage markets. Marriage market means how economics affects who marries, whose bonds endure and what this means for future generations of workers and parents. Analyzing marriage markets as they pertain to marriage has several benefits. First, marriage market conditions are forces that influence marriage from outside they subjects affect, which means they impact the general trends of marriage decisions.: 42 In other words, individual circumstances cause people to make decisions about their marriages that might be specific to their personal situation; marriage markets impact all peoples' decisions about marriage from a macro level, which means steady incomes and jobs make for sound marriage. In addition, job stability benefits both employers through greater productivity and families though more cohesion. Second, marriage market conditions may capture many economic influences.: 43 Empirical findings indicate that financial stability is an important requisite for marriage. In weak marriage markets (when there is high unemployment) couples who would like to get married may delay doing so due to unemployment or financial troubles. Furthermore, even couples that are already married may face doubts about the future economic status of themselves or their partners, which can create marital instability. Conversely, strong labor markets (when unemployment is low) may improve the employment situation and financial situation of either partner, which may facilitate marriage and increase economic stability.: 44 Thus, when marriage markets are strong and unemployment is low, marriage may be perceived as more attractive to individuals than when marriage markets and weak and unemployment is high.[citation needed] Social class interacts with gender to impact the male-female dynamic in marriage, particularly with respect to "temporal flexibility at work and home".: 397 Research shows that class-advantaged men and women use their class privilege and the flexibility it provides them in ways that support conventional gender roles. Conversely, men and women who do not have access to such flexibility and control of their time are pressured to weaken conventional gender expectations regarding marriage, family, and jobs. Gertsel and Clawson conducted a study in which they collected data from four groups of paid care workers, divided by class and gender (2014). The two class-advantaged groups were nurses and doctors. The nurses were almost exclusively women and the doctors were almost exclusively men. This group had a number of choices about work hours and their ability to utilize family-friendly workplace policies. The two class-disadvantaged groups were female nursing assistants (CNAs) and male emergency medical technicians (EMTs). The class-disadvantaged group had fewer choices regarding their work hours and faced greater constraints in flexibility and control of their time. Women in particular need flexible work hours in order to meet the inflexible demands that marriage and a family place upon them, as traditional gender expectations stipulate that the woman be the primary caregiver.: 405 The results of this study demonstrate that class, intersecting with gender, influences the ability of men and women to obtain and utilize flexibility with their time.[citation needed] Furthermore, gender shapes the particular variety of flexibility demanded. In advantaged occupations, both men and women are able to acquire the flexibility they so desire. However, they choose to use the control that this affords them in different manners. Women cut back on paid work hours and take leaves to handle domestic labor and child-care. In other words, they make job sacrifices. On the other hand, men are less likely to utilize family-friendly policies to make work sacrifices; they spend less at home and more time working. In essence, both men and women of class-advantaged occupations use the flexibility that their status provides them to "enact neotraditional gender expectations".: 424 Moreover, men also have a workplace advantage because employers portray fathers as more committed, productive, and responsible than men without children. Working-class men tend to emphasize bread-winning masculinity while middle-class men focus on the traditional gender-based division of labor. On average fathers spend about forty-three hours a week working for pay and eighteen hours per week on the house and kids. Ultimately, this comes out to fathers doing about two-thirds of the paid work and one-third of the unpaid work. Class-disadvantaged men and women do not have the same temporal flexibility that allows them to make decisions on how to allocate their time. They face stricter constraints on their work hours and policies, thus making it impossible for them to choose whether to spend more time at work or more time at home. For example, even if a class-disadvantaged woman wanted to spend less time at work and more time with her children or in the home, she might not be able due to the inability to get time off from work or take a leave of absence. Notably, five out of six mothers would join the workforce if they had sufficient child care while they were away from home. In America, the average cost of infant care is about $9,589 a year and childcare for young children under the age of four will cost about 64% of full-time minimum wage workers' earnings in one single year.[as of?] For this reason, low-income families will save money by leaving one parent at home outside of the workforce to care for the children. Individuals who specialize in unpaid labor in the household may feel subordinated to the breadwinner because they feel they have minimal voice in their relationship or financial decisions. Additionally, women who take time out of the workforce to raise their young children will lose out on wages, benefits, and social security contributions. To illustrate this, mothers who take three or more years off of work for their family have about 37% decrease in income; this is also considered to be the "mommy tax". Of course, this is less noticeable among women who are married to breadwinners because they are willing to share their income and wealth with their stay-at-home spouse. Thus, class-disadvantage makes it more difficult for both men and women to adhere to traditional gender expectations. The researchers showed that class advantage is used to "do gender" in traditional ways, while class disadvantage may lead to a violation of traditional gender expectations in a way that "undoes gender".: 431 Today there is a shift in gender roles, with twice as many stay-at-home fathers than there were two decades ago.[as of?] Four out of five of the stay at home fathers report that they are only home due to disabilities, illness, education, unemployment or retirement. But race also plays a factor in employment for fathers. African American, Hispanic, Asian men and men with limited education are more likely to stay at home than white highly educated men. Research indicates that three principal factors predict how well men and women perceive their work–life balance in marriage: job characteristics, family characteristics, and spillover between work and family.: 2 Job characteristics determine workers' freedom to balance multiple demands and obligations in their marriage. As demonstrated by Gertsel and Clawson, higher-level occupations are generally more accommodating to family life than are lower level occupations (2014). Furthermore, the number of hours worked and the work spillover into family life are the most telling predictors of perceived imbalance in marriage. Keene and Quadagno found a greater likelihood of perceived imbalance when work duties caused men or women to miss a family event or make it difficult to maintain their home (2004). Additional research by Keene and Quadagno suggests that the gender expectations that men should prioritize their work lives and women should prioritize their marriage and home life no longer exist. However, there persists an unequal division of labor in the home between men and women. One theoretical approach to explain this concept is the "gender similarity" approach, which "predicts that the convergence in men's and women's work and family demands should lead to a convergence in attitudes toward work and family responsibilities and feelings of work-family balance".: 4 In contrast, the "gender differences" approach stipulates that "normative differences between men and women remain, with the family still primarily defined as women's sphere and paid work as men's domain".: 4 There is empirical evidence in support of both theories. Some research supports the convergence of men's and women's work experiences: both men and women make adjustments in their marriage and personal lives to meet their employer's expectations, while also making adjustments at work to maintain their marital and family obligations. However, the analysis from the abovementioned study supports the gender differences model. Gender differences exist in the division of household labor and chores, with men working more hours and women spending more time on domestic and child-care responsibilities. On average mothers spend twenty-five hours a week working for pay and thirty-two hours doing unpaid work. The introduction of parenthood changes the gender division of labor between men and women both inside and outside the home. Dual-parent households allocate household work and paid work efficiently to maximize family income. As a result, women are left to specialize in unpaid household work because women are presumed to be more efficient at childcare and generally earn less than men in the labor force. Many women either minimize, shift or completely dismiss their initial career or education aspirations when anticipating parenthood. Consequently, this forces women into disadvantaged career opportunities and reasserts the gender labor market inequality. Divorce The divorce rate in western countries has generally increased over time. Divorce rates have however started to decrease over the last twenty years. In the US, the divorce rate changed from 1.2 per 1000 marriages in 1860 to 3.0, 4.0, and 7.7 in 1890, 1900, 1920. The rate has since declined, to 5.3, 4.7, 4.1, and 3.7 per 1000 marriages in 1979, 1990, 2000, and 2004 respectively. The divorce rate in the United States fell 21 percent from 2008 to 2017, as people married at later ages and higher levels of education. The following are several possible causes for the modern increase in rate of divorce: Many scholars have attempted to explain why humans enter relationships, stay in relationships and end relationships. Levinger's (1965, 1976) theory on divorce is based on a theoretical tradition consisting of three basic components: attractions, barriers and alternatives. Attraction in this theory is proportional to the rewards one gets from the relationship minus the cost of the relationship. All the things that can be seen as gains from the relationship such as love, sex, companionship, emotional support and daily assistance are the rewards of the relationship. The costs would be the negative aspects of the relationship such as domestic violence, infidelity, quarrels and limitations on personal freedom. Generally people tend to stay in high-reward and low-cost relationships. However, the reverse situation, that is, a costly marriage with few benefits does not automatically lead to divorce. Couples must overcome barriers such as religious beliefs, social stigma, and financial dependence or law restrictions before they successfully dissolve their marriage. Another theory to explain why relationships end is the "mate ejection theory", by Brian Boutwell, J. C. Barnes and K. M Beaver. The mate ejection theory looks at the dissolution of marriage from an evolutionary point of view, where all species seek to successfully reproduce. According to this theory there are gender differences in the process of ejection. For example, a woman will be more upset when her husband emotionally cheats on her and a man will be more upset when his wife physically cheats on him. The reason for this stems from evolutionary roots: a man emotionally cheating on his wife equates to a loss or reduction in resources for the wife to raise the children whereas an act of physical infidelity by the wife threatens the husband's chance to pass on his genes to the next generation via reproduction. Both these circumstances call for mate ejection. "Ancestral conditions that favored the dissolution of a mateship constituted a recurrent adaptive problem over human evolutionary history and thus imposed selection pressures for the evolution of strategic solutions." Put differently, the capability of emancipating themselves from certain relationships could have conferred a fitness benefit for ancestral humans. Three longitudinal studies on divorce: The Marin County Project (the clinical study of 60 families that began in 1971), The Virginia County Study (a series of longitudinal studies on marriage, divorce and remarriage) and The Binuclear Family Studies of 98 families have helped expand the literature on divorce. The Binuclear study was based on the findings from the Marin County Project and Virginia County Study. This research has been used to understand the implications of divorce on children later on in life.[citation needed] Judith Wallerstein's research on the effect of divorce on children (based on the Marin County Project) suggests that, "children with divorced parents often reach adulthood as psychologically troubled individuals who find it difficult to maintain satisfying relationships with others". Quantitative research done by other scholars supports Wallerstein's conclusion.[citation needed] It has been shown that children with divorced parents have an increased risk of: experiencing psychological problems, having troubled marriages, divorcing and having poor relationships with parents especially the father.[citation needed] Wallerstein, however, has a disputed an "extreme version" of her theory where she claims that the difference between the children with divorced and continuously married parents is dramatic and pervasive. One opponent of Wallerstein's conclusions is Mavis Hetherington, who argues that the negative effects of divorce on children have been exaggerated and that most children grow up without long-term harm. Hetherington's data showed that 25% of children with divorced parents reach adulthood with a serious social, emotional or psychological problem, compared to 10% of children with continuously married parents. 75% of the children grow up to be well-functioning adults.[citation needed] Twenty years after the 98 families from the binuclear study were interviewed, 85% of the offspring from these families were interviewed. Of those, 23% had completed postgraduate training, 33% had completed college, 31% had completed post-secondary training, 10% had received their high school diplomas and the majority (85%) of the interviewed children were employed. Effects of technology In the past few decades, technology has drastically advanced, and with it, so has its effect on society. Dr. Schoppe-Sullivan studied the effects technology, particularly social media, had on parents and the way they raise their children. She studied approximately 200 dual-income families who had their first child between 2008 and 2009, observing how social media pressured them in their roles as parents. What she found was an increased level in confidence from the fathers and the opposite effect in mothers; fathers felt more confident after viewing other parents on social media, while mothers were worried after viewing posts depicting ideal or perfect family photos or concerned with the comments they would receive on their posts from others criticizing their parenting. This led directly into increased levels of stress and lower confidence, which affected the children's reactions to their parents, altering the behavior of the children. Sociology of motherhood Mothering is the social practice of nurturing and caring for dependent children. It is a dynamic process of social interactions and relationships. Mothering is typically associated with women since it is typically women who mother their children. However, "not all women mother, and mothering as nurturing and caring work is not inevitable the exclusive domain of women". Some argue that mothering as a female role is a social construction that is highly influenced by gender belief systems. The roles associated with motherhood are variable across time and culture. The universalist approach to motherhood is aimed at conceptualizing the work that mothers do. This approach identifies mothers through what they do, rather than how they feel. Mothers share a set of activities known as "maternal practice" that are universal, even though they vary as individuals and across cultures. These activities include nurturing, protecting, and training their children. An individual's mothering actions are shaped by their beliefs about family, individuality, the nature of childhood, and the nature of their child. These are also often shaped by their own childhood and past experiences with children. The dynamic interactions between the mother and child create deep and meaningful connections. The particularistic approach to mothering suggests that the role of a mother, their activities, and understandings cannot be separated from the context in which they live. According to this theory, mothering takes place within "specific historical contexts framed by interlocking structures of race, class, and gender" Furthermore, a mother's strategies and meanings that she develops are influenced by different social locations, such as the intersections of regional and local political economy with class, ethnicity, culture, and sexual preference. Motherhood ideology is influenced by the idealization of the family structure and perpetuates the image of a heterosexual couple with children. Some sociologists refer to this as the "bourgeois family", which arose out of typical 16th- and 17th-century European households and is often considered the "traditional Western" structure. In this family model the father acts as the economic support and sometimes disciplinarian of the family, while the mother or other female relative oversees most of the child-rearing. In East Asian and Western traditional families, fathers were the heads of the families, which meant that his duties included providing financial support and making critical decisions, some of which must have been obeyed without question by the rest of the family members. "Some Asian American men are brought up under stringent gender role expectations such as a focus on group harmony and filial piety, carrying on their family name and conforming to the expectations of the parents." The mother's role in the family is celebrated on Mother's Day. Ann Jarvis originally organized Mother's Work Day, protesting the lack of cleanliness and sanitation in the workplace. Jarvis died in 1905 and her daughter created a National Mother's Day to honor her mother. Mothers frequently have a very important role in raising offspring and the title can be given to a non-biological mother that fills this role. This is common in stepmothers. There are many cultural contradictions and diverse arrangements and practices that challenge the intensive mothering ideology. However, they are considered deviant discourses since they do not conform to the script of full-time motherhood in the context of marriage. These include single mothers, welfare mothers, minority mothers, immigrant mothers, and lesbian mothers. These types of motherhood categories are not mutually exclusive. Furthermore, women who cannot or choose not to be mothers deal with many internal and external pressures. In the United States, 82.5 million women are mothers of all ages, while the national average age of first child births is 25.1 years. In 2008, 10% of births were to teenage girls, and 14% were to women ages 35 and older. In the United States, a study found that the average woman spends 5 years working and building a career before having children, and mothers working non-salary jobs began having children at age 27, compared to mothers with salary positions, who became pregnant at age 31. The study shows that the difference in age of child birth is related to education, since the longer a woman has been in school, the older she will be when she enters the workforce. Sociology of fatherhood According to anthropologist Maurice Godelier, a critical novelty in human society, compared to humans' closest biological relatives (chimpanzees and bonobos) which are unaware of paternity, is the parental role assumed by men. In many cultures, especially traditional western, a father is usually the husband in a married couple. Many times fathers have a very important role in raising offspring and the title can be given to a non-biological father that fills this role. This is common in stepfathers (males married to biological mothers). In East Asian and Western traditional families, fathers are the heads of the families, which means that their duties include providing financial support and making critical decisions, some of which must be obeyed without question by the rest of the family members. As with cultural concepts of family, the specifics of a father's role vary according to cultural folkways. In what some sociologists term the "bourgeois family", which arose out of typical 16th- and 17th-century European households, the father's role has been somewhat limited. In this family model the father acts as the economic support and sometimes disciplinarian of the family, while the mother or other female relative oversees most of the child-rearing. This structure is enforced, for example, in societies which legislate maternity leave but do not have a corresponding paternity leave.[citation needed] However, this limited role has increasingly been called into question. Since the 1950s, social scientists as well as feminists have increasingly criticized gendered arrangements of work and care, and the male breadwinner role, and policies are increasingly targeting men as fathers, as a tool of changing gender relations. Described as 'the science of male parenting', the study of 'father craft' emerged principally in Britain and the United States (but also throughout Europe) in the 1920s. "Male adjuncts to Maternity and Infant Welfare Centers – reacted to the maternal dominance in infant welfare and parenting in interwar Britain by arguing that fathers should play a crucial role in the upbringing of children." Were such a study to be conducted into the science of female parenting, it would be called mother craft.[citation needed] The words mama and mom, usually regarded as terms of endearment directed towards a mother figure, are generally one of the first words a child speaks. While dada or dad often precedes it, this does not reflect a stronger bond between the father and child than that of the mother and child. Mama and mom are merely simpler to pronounce than dada or dad, as /m/ typically occurs earlier in phonological development. Children tend to remember daddy more because, according to research, they are more exciting to the child. A number of studies have been given to the American public to determine how men view and define fatherhood. Specifically, studies have focused on why men choose to become fathers and the relationship between fatherhood and contemporary masculinity. Not surprisingly, recent research on fatherhood is framed by identity theory and has focused on the salience, centrality, and importance of the father identity in men's lives, especially as it may be linked to men's involvement with their children. According to identity theory, the more salient and central the identity, the more likely individuals are to engage in behaviors associated with it. Salience refers to the readiness to act out an identity in a particular situation. Centrality refers to the importance of an identity in relation to other identities. The centrality of the father identity is usually held at a higher level (as opposed to brother, husband, etc.) due to the gendered expectation that men must be "good" fathers. Men who view their role as a father central and crucial to who they are as a person are more likely to engage with their children and strive to participate in responsible fatherhood. Men who fail to successfully become fathers or are unable to have children view the lack of fatherhood as a threat to their masculinity. As a result, the threat to masculinity serves as a driving force for men to possibly become fathers because they never want to be seen as infertile or effeminate. Studies on men who choose not to be fathers often focus on how the role of fatherhood is crucial to masculinity and a man's central identity. Many men blame economic difficulties, cultural differences, and life situations as potential factors that deter them from fatherhood. Economic difficulties, see economic problem, serve as a primary explanation for men to avoid fatherhood. For men, it is difficult to separate occupational success from fatherhood because financially providing for one's family has been central to the identity of being a father in the United States. As a result, a complex relationship is formed between economic struggles and the importance of fatherhood. Men who are not employed or have low earnings often feel as if they have failed as both fathers and men. On the other hand, men who have a low socioeconomic status find fatherhood very appealing because it gives them a measure of accomplishment denied to them by the occupational world.[citation needed] In terms of the cultural importance of fatherhood, white men and men of color have differing views on fatherhood that can affect how many of these men participate in fatherhood. Lastly, some men blame life situations as the primary factor for their decision not to pursue fatherhood. Life situations are defined as an individual's relationship status (single or married) and their age. Studies have shown that men who are older and married tend to be more likely to pursue fatherhood. It has been proposed that men continue to view marriage, work and fatherhood as a "package deal" meaning that lacking one of these components, like work or marriage, may result in the decision not to have children. It has also been proposed that married men feel as if they are expected to pursue fatherhood as a part of their marriage though they personally may not want to have children. On the other hand, men who are single and younger do not feel the same desire because they are not "prepared" to emotionally and financially support a child.[citation needed] Alternate family forms The number of married couples raising children has decreased over the years. In Canada, married and common-law couples with children under the age of 25 represented 44% of all families in 2001. This statistic has lowered since 1991, when married and common-law couples raising children under the age of 25 represented 49 percent of all Canadian families. There are various family forms which are becoming increasingly popular in society.[citation needed] In Canada, one-parent families have become popular since 1961 when only 8.4 percent of children were being raised by a single parent. In 2001, 15.6 percent of children were being raised by a single parent. The number of single-parent families continue to rise, while it is four times more likely that the mother is the parent raising the child.[citation needed] The high percentage of mothers becoming the sole parent is sometimes due to the result of a divorce, unplanned pregnancy or the inability to find a befitting partner.[citation needed]. A residence containing an unmarried couple is called cohabitation. This type of family style is becoming increasingly accepted in Canada and has increased from 8% in 1981 to 16.4% in 2001. In the last few decades,[as of?] living with one's significant other has become normalized in society. Cohabitation has drastically increased in the United States within the last 50 years, increasing by nearly 900 percent. Data from a 2012 Census showed that 7.8 million couples are living together without first getting married, compared to 2.9 million in 1996. And two-thirds of couples married in 2012 shared a home together for more than two years before their marriage. Gay and lesbian couples are categorized as same-sex relationships. In 1989, Denmark was the first nation to allow same-sex couples to marry and to provide equal rights to all citizens. Many nations began to allow same-sex marriages, such as Canada and Spain (2005). A United States Supreme Court ruling mandated that same-sex marriage is constitutional and therefore allowed in all 50 states in the United States (2015). Children of same-sex couples either come from past relationships or through other opportunities like adoption or artificial insemination.[citation needed] From the data collected in the 2000 U.S. Census, it was suggested that more than 250,000 children in the United States were being raised by lesbian and gay couples.[citation needed] In the 2010 U.S. Census, it was reported that 20% of lesbian and gay couple or partnership households are raising children (115,064 out of 594,000 same-sex households). The trend of child-rearing amongst gay and lesbian couples or partnerships is on the rise. Support from the general public for gay and lesbian couples or partnerships to raise children is at an all-time high since the 1990s.[citation needed] In 1994, the idea of homosexual partnerships parenting children was evenly divided among Americans. When Americans were asked, "Do you think homosexual couples should or should not have the legal right to adopt a child", 28% of Americans said they should, and 65% said they should not.[citation needed] In 2003, the idea of homosexual partnerships parenting children evenly divided Americans for support. When Americans were asked the same question about the rights of homosexual partnerships to adopt, 49% of Americans said they should, and 48% said they should not. In 2014, Americans were asked a very similar question, and 63% of Americans said lesbian and gay couples or partnerships should have the right to adopt, and 35% said they should not.[citation needed] There are no federal laws in the United States prohibiting the adoption of a child by a homosexual couple or partnership.[citation needed] Some states, such as Florida, base same-sex adoption on the opinions of the county judge in charge of the case, and county judges base their decisions on the best interest of the child.[citation needed] The central argument in the debate for legal rights, policies and overall support is related to the idea of same-sex couples raising children is the well-being of children raised in those families. There are concerns like about the mental, emotional and even the social development of children who are raised in same-sex couple or partnership households. Much research has been conducted providing insight into a range of issues, including the personal development, gender development, peer relationships, and family relationships of children with same-sex parents.[citation needed] Research suggests that sexual identities (including gender identity, gender-role behavior, and sexual orientation) develop in much the same ways among children of lesbian mothers as they do among children of heterosexual parents.[citation needed] Evidence also suggests that children of lesbian and gay parents have normal social relationships with peers and adults.[citation needed] There have also been studies of other aspects of personal development (including personality, self-concept, and conduct) that similarly reveal few differences between children of lesbian mothers and children of heterosexual parents.[citation needed] These differences are not significant but are noticeable. For example, there was a study that examined and compared particular behaviors and ideas/belief performed by sons and daughters of lesbian mothers. Studies found that 53% of the daughters of lesbian mothers aspired to pursue careers as physicians, attorneys, and engineers compared with only 21% of the daughters of heterosexual mothers.[citation needed] The sons of lesbian mothers also tended to be less aggressive and more nurturing than the sons of heterosexual mothers.[citation needed] "Children who grow up with one or two gay and/or lesbian parents fare as well in emotional, cognitive, social, and sexual functioning as do children whose parents are heterosexual. Children's optimal development seems to be influenced more by the nature of the relationships and interactions within the family unit than by the particular structural form it takes." Others who are not related by blood or marriage, but have a significant emotional relationship are variously called fictive kin, chosen kin, or voluntary kin: for example, a close family friend that one would refer to as an aunt or uncle, but shares no genetic or marital relationship. Sociology of childhood The values learned during childhood are important in the development and socialization of children. The family is considered to be the agency of primary socialisation and the first focal socialisation agency. Since the 2000s, a new subfield, sociology of childhood, has gained increasing attention and triggered numerous empirical studies as well as intensive theoretical disputes, starting in the Scandinavian and the English-speaking countries. A different approach was adopted in Europe and the United States, with European sociologists more interested in actively promoting children's rights. Up to this time, sociology had approached children and childhood mainly from a socialization perspective, and the emergence of the new childhood sociological paradigm ran parallel to the feminist critique of sociological traditions. Childhood sociologists attacked the "adultocentric" approach and the "separative view" of sociology towards children. Not surprisingly, then, the key works in the sociology of childhood are quite interdisciplinary, linking history, cultural studies, ethnomethodology, and pedagogy. Key texts include James and Prout's Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood (1990/1997), James, Jenks and Prout Theorizing Childhood (1998) and Prout's The Future of Childhood (2005). On methodological issues in research with children see Research with Children, edited by Christensen and James (2008). The current sociology of childhood is organized around three central discussions: The child as a social actor: This approach derives from youth sociology as well as ethnography. Focusing on everyday life and the ways children orient themselves in society, it engages with the cultural performances and the social worlds they construct and take part in. Theory and research methodology approach children as active participants and members of society right from the beginning. Thus they are neither analyzed as outsiders to society nor as merely 'emergent' members of society. Therefore, the sociology of childhood distinguishes itself from the established concepts of socialisation research and developmental psychology of the last decades. The generational order: The second approach centers on socio-structural and socio-theoretical questions concerning social equality and social order in a society, which categorizes their members by age and segregates them in many respects (rights, deeds, economical participation, ascribed needs etc.). These issues can be summarized under the overall concept of the generational order. Thus the categorization of societal members by age is far from being an innocent representation of natural distinctions, but rather a social construction of such a "natural truth". It is, therefore, a relevant component of social order and deeply connected to other dimensions of social inequality. Social and economic changes and socio-political interventions thus become central topics in childhood sociology. The analysis of these issues has increased awareness of the generational inequality of societies. The hybridity of childhood: This discussion is more critical (though not dismissive) of the social constructionist approaches that have dominated the sociology of childhood since the 1990s. More open to materialist perspectives, it seeks an interdisciplinary path that recognizes the biological as well as the social and cultural shaping of childhood and holds open the possibility of an interdisciplinary Childhood Studies emergent from current multi-disciplinary efforts. This scholarship has two important influences. Firstly, a so-called 'new wave' of childhood studies, heavily influenced by Alan Prout's (2005) seminal book The Future of Childhood. In this work, Prout examines how childhoods are not merely constructed socially – via discourses, laws or institutions – but materially, through toys, food and medicines. Since then, sociologists such as Nick Lee have offered important analyses of the ways in which the 'entanglements' between children and non-human materialities and technologies have become ever-more important to the governance and regulation of children's lives, through what he terms the 'biopoliticisation' of childhood. Secondly, nonrepresentational approaches to children's geographies have offered a commensurate and (arguably) broader series of approaches that move beyond social constructivism. Scholars such as Peter Kraftl, John Horton and Affrica Taylor have been particularly influential in examining how childhoods are produced and experienced through complex intersections of emotion, affect, embodiment and materiality. Somewhat problematically, there has been relatively little overlap between these two strands of scholarship, despite their sharing common conceptual foundations in the work of post-structuralism, new materialism and posthumanism. Nevertheless, during the mid-2010s, a so-called 'spatial turn' in childhood and education studies saw increasing cross-fertilisation between these fields and the take-up of children's geographers' work by sociologists and others. Therefore, the prospects for cross-disciplinary scholarship around hybridity, spatiality and a 'new wave' remain very promising – perhaps most evident in a recent[as of?] volume by Julie Seymour, Abigail Hackett and Lisa Procter.[editorializing] There has been much research and discussion about the effects of society on the assumption of gender roles in childhood, and how societal norms perpetuate gender-differentiated interactions with children. Psychologists and sociologists suggest that self-gender identity is a result of social learning from peers, role-modeling within the family unit, and genetic predisposition. The sociological implications are as follows: Peer interactions: There are significant gender differences in the relationship styles among children which particularly begin to emerge after early childhood and at the onset of middle childhood around age six and grow more prevalent with age. Boys tend to play in larger groups than girls, and friends of boys are more likely to become friends with each other which, in turn leads to more density in social networks among boys. Boys also have more well-defined dominance hierarchies than girls within their peer groups. In terms of dyadic relationships, girls are more likely to have longer-lasting relationships of this nature, but no literature suggests that girls engage in more dyadic relationships than boys. Girls are also more prosocial in conflict situations and are better at collaborative work and play than boys. They also spend more time in social conversations than boys and are more likely to self-disclose among their peers than boys. On the other hand, boys are more likely than girls to engage in organized play such as sports and activities with well-defined rules. One theory suggests that because of this, boys have more opportunities to exhibit their strength and skill and compare theirs to that of their peers during these competitive activities. Girls' peer groups are characterized by strong interpersonal relations, empathy for others, and working towards connection-oriented goals, while boys focus more on asserting their own dominance in the peer group and agenda-oriented goals. Significant social differences also exist between boys and girls when experiencing and dealing with social stress. Boys experience more social stress among their peers than girls in the form of verbal and physical abuse, but girls experience more social stress through strains in their friendships and social networks. To deal with social stress, girls do more support-seeking, express more emotions to their friends, and ruminate more than boys. Boys use humor as a distraction from stress and seek less emotional support within their friendships and social networks. Family interactions: Overall, the literature implies that the biological gender of children affects how parents interact with them. Differentials in interaction range from the amount of time spent with children to how much parents invest financially in their children's futures. On average, fathers tend to exhibit more differential treatment than mothers, and fathers tend to be more invested in families with sons than families with daughters in terms of both time and money. However, the association of gender with father investment has been weakening over the years, and the differentials are not large. Parents tend to enroll their daughters in more cultural activities than their sons (e.g. art classes, dance classes, and musical instrument lessons), and tend to be more invested in school-related parent involvement programs for their sons than their daughters. Sons and daughters are not only treated differently by their parents based on gender, but also receive different benefits from their parents based on gender. Parents, both fathers and mothers, may be less invested in their daughters' higher education than their sons' and tend to save more money on average in anticipation for their sons' enrollment in educational institutions after high school graduation. However, this may not lead to more academic or work success for sons later in life. Parents are also more likely to underestimate daughters' abilities in math and science while overestimating that of sons. Daughters also, on average, also do more housework than sons, which reflects gendered divisions in the workplace and household in society. Sibling relations, unlike parental relations, show no consensus in the literature about being gender-differentiated in interactions and benefits. However, sex-minority siblings may have more difficulty receiving necessary sex-specific treatment from parents. Questions about socialization practices and institutions remain central in childhood research. But, they are being dealt with in a new, more sociological way. To analyze socialization processes means, therefore, to reconstruct the historically and culturally varying conceptions, processes and institutions of disciplining and civilization of the offspring. In addition, the strategies of habitus formation and the practices of status (re-)production are considered. The sociology of social inequality and the sociology of the family and private life are, therefore, important fields for childhood sociologists. Children's own action, their resistance, cooperation, and collective action among peers has to be taken into account. Meanwhile, widespread anthropological assumptions concerning a universal human nature, based on a view of individual and society as opposed to each other, should be omitted from the conceptual repertoire of sociological childhood research. They are the legacy of the older socialization approach and they legitimate some forms of childhood and education practices as indispensable and even as a "natural" requirement of society, while devaluing others. In this way they generally legitimate western middle class childhood and mask inequality and the interests of social order.[editorializing] Journals See also References Further reading External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgian_language] | [TOKENS: 2955] |
Contents Georgian language Georgian (ქართული ენა, kartuli ena, pronounced [ˈkʰäɾt̪ʰuli ˈe̞n̪ä]) is the most widely spoken Kartvelian language. It is the official language of Georgia and the native or primary language of 88% of its population. It also serves as the literary language or lingua franca for speakers of related languages. Its speakers amount to approximately 3.8 million. Georgian is written with its own unique Georgian scripts, alphabetical systems of unclear origin. Georgian is not related to any of the world's major language families found outside of Georgia. It is most closely connected to other regional languages of Georgia, such as Megrelian and, more distantly, Svan. Georgian has various dialects, with standard Georgian based on the Kartlian dialect, and all dialects are mutually intelligible. The history of Georgian spans from Early Old Georgian in the 5th century, to Modern Georgian. Its development as a written language began with the Christianization of Georgia in the 4th century. Georgian phonology features a rich consonant system, including aspirated, voiced, and ejective stops, affricates, and fricatives. Its vowel system consists of five vowels with varying realizations. Georgian prosody involves weak stress, with disagreements among linguists on its placement. The language's phonotactics include complex consonant clusters and harmonic clusters. The Mkhedruli script, dominant in modern usage, corresponds closely to Georgian phonemes and has no case distinction, though it employs a capital-like effect called Mtavruli for titles and inscriptions. Georgian is an agglutinative language with a complex verb structure that can include up to eight morphemes, exhibiting polypersonalism. The language has seven noun cases and employs a left-branching structure with adjectives preceding nouns and postpositions instead of prepositions. Georgian lacks grammatical gender and articles, with definite meanings established through context. Georgian's rich derivation system allows for extensive noun and verb formation from roots, with many words featuring initial consonant clusters. The Georgian writing system has evolved from ancient scripts into Mkhedruli, used for most purposes. The language has a robust grammatical framework with distinctive features such as syncope in morphophonology and a left-branching syntax. Georgian's vocabulary is highly derivational, allowing for diverse word formations, while its numeric system is vigesimal, based on 20, as opposed to a base 10 (decimal) system. Classification No claimed genetic links between the Kartvelian languages and any other language family in the world are accepted in mainstream linguistics. Among the Kartvelian languages, Georgian is most closely related to the so-called Zan languages (Megrelian and Laz); glottochronological studies indicate that it split from the latter approximately 2700 years ago. Svan is a more distant relative that split off much earlier, perhaps 4000 years ago. Dialects The Georgian language has at least 18 dialects, with Standard Georgian being largely based on the Kartlian dialect. Over the centuries, it has exerted a strong influence on the other dialects. As a result, they are all, generally, mutually intelligible with standard Georgian, and with one another. History The history of the Georgian language is conventionally divided into the following phases: The earliest extant references to Georgian are found in the writings of Marcus Cornelius Fronto, a Roman grammarian from the 2nd century AD. The first direct attestations of the language are inscriptions and palimpsests dating to the 5th century, and the oldest surviving literary work is the 5th century Martyrdom of the Holy Queen Shushanik by Iakob Tsurtaveli. The emergence of Georgian as a written language appears to have been the result of the Christianization of Georgia in the mid-4th century, which led to the replacement of Aramaic as the literary language. By the 11th century, Old Georgian had developed into Middle Georgian. The most famous work of this period is the epic poem The Knight in the Panther's Skin, written by Shota Rustaveli in the 12th century. In 1629, a certain Nikoloz Cholokashvili authored the first printed books written (partially) in Georgian, the Alphabetum Ibericum sive Georgianum cum Oratione and the Dittionario giorgiano e italiano. These were meant to help western Catholic missionaries learn Georgian for evangelical purposes. Phonology On the left are IPA symbols, and on the right are the corresponding letters of the modern Georgian alphabet, which is essentially phonemic. Former /qʰ/ (ჴ) has merged with /x/ (ხ), leaving only the latter. The glottalization of the ejectives is rather light, and in fact Georgian transliterates the tenuis stops in foreign words and names with the ejectives. The coronal occlusives (/tʰ tʼ d n/, not necessarily affricates) are variously described as apical dental, laminal alveolar, and "dental". Per Canepari, the main realizations of the vowels are [i], [e̞], [ä], [o̞], [u]. Aronson describes their realizations as [i̞], [e̞], [ä] (but "slightly fronted"), [o̞], [u̞]. Shosted transcribed one speaker's pronunciation more-or-less consistently with [i], [ɛ], [ɑ], [ɔ], [u]. Allophonically, [ə] may be inserted to break up consonant clusters, as in /dɡas/ [dəɡäs]. In casual speech, /i/ preceded or followed by a vowel may be realized as [i̯]~[j]. similarly, /u/ and /o/ before a vowel may be realized as [w]. Phrase-final unstressed vowels are sometimes partially reduced. Sequences /aa ii ee oo uu/ occurring at word and morpheme boundaries may be realized as single long vowels [äː iː e̞ː o̞ː uː], as in /kʼibeebi/ [ˈkʼibe̞ːbi] ("stairs"). Prosody in Georgian involves stress, intonation, and rhythm. Stress is very weak, and linguists disagree as to where stress occurs in words. Jun, Vicenik, and Lofstedt have proposed that Georgian stress and intonation are the result of pitch accents on the first syllable of a word and near the end of a phrase. According to Borise, Georgian has fixed initial word-level stress cued primarily by greater syllable duration and intensity of the initial syllable of a word. Georgian vowels in non-initial syllables are pronounced with a shorter duration compared to vowels in initial syllables. long polysyllabic words may have a secondary stress on their third or fourth syllable. According to Gamq'relidze et al, quadrisyllabic words may be exceptionally stressed on their second syllable. Stressed vowels in Georgian have slightly longer duration, more intensity, and higher pitch compared to unstressed vowels. Some Georgian dialects have distinctive stress. Georgian contains many "harmonic clusters" involving two consonants of a similar type (voiced, aspirated, or ejective) that are pronounced with only a single release; e.g. ბგერა bgera 'sound', ცხოვრება tskhovreba 'life', and წყალი ts’q’ali 'water'. There are also frequent consonant clusters, sometimes involving more than six consonants in a row, as may be seen in words like გვფრცქვნი gvprtskvni 'you peel us' and მწვრთნელი mts’vrtneli 'trainer'. Vicenik has observed that Georgian vowels following ejective stops have creaky voice and suggests this may be one cue distinguishing ejectives from their aspirated and voiced counterparts. Writing system Georgian has been written in a variety of scripts over its history. Currently the Mkhedruli script is almost completely dominant; the others are used mostly in religious documents and architecture. Mkhedruli has 33 letters in common use; a half dozen more are obsolete in Georgian, though still used in other alphabets, like Mingrelian, Laz, and Svan. The letters of Mkhedruli correspond closely to the phonemes of the Georgian language. According to the traditional account written down by Leonti Mroveli in the 11th century, the first Georgian script was created by the first ruler of the Kingdom of Iberia, Pharnavaz, in the 3rd century BC. The first examples of a Georgian script date from the 5th century AD. There are now three Georgian scripts, called Asomtavruli 'capitals', Nuskhuri 'small letters', and Mkhedruli. The first two are used together as upper and lower case in the writings of the Georgian Orthodox Church and together are called Khutsuri 'priest alphabet'. In Mkhedruli, there is no case. Sometimes, however, a capital-like effect, called Mtavruli ('title' or 'heading'), is achieved by modifying the letters so that their vertical sizes are identical and they rest on the baseline with no descenders. These capital-like letters are often used in page headings, chapter titles, monumental inscriptions, and the like. This is the Georgian standard keyboard layout. The standard Windows keyboard is essentially that of manual typewriters. Grammar Georgian is an agglutinative language. Certain prefixes and suffixes can be joined in order to build a verb. In some cases, one verb can have up to eight different morphemes in it at the same time. An example is ageshenebinat ('you [all] should've built [it]'). The verb can be broken down to parts: a-g-e-shen-eb-in-a-t. Each morpheme here contributes to the meaning of the verb tense or the person who has performed the verb. The verb conjugation also exhibits polypersonalism; a verb may potentially include morphemes representing both the subject and the object. In Georgian morphophonology, syncope is a common phenomenon. When a suffix (especially the plural suffix -eb-) is attached to a word that has either of the vowels a or e in the last syllable, this vowel is, in most words, lost. For example, megobari means 'friend'; megobrebi (megobØrebi) means 'friends', with the loss of a in the last syllable of the word stem. Georgian has seven noun cases: nominative, ergative, dative, genitive, instrumental, adverbial and vocative. An interesting feature of Georgian is that, while the subject of a sentence is generally in the nominative case and the object is in the accusative case (or dative), one can find this reversed in many situations (this depends mainly on the character of the verb). This is called the dative construction. In the past tense of the transitive verbs, and in the present tense of the verb "to know", the subject is in the ergative case. Vocabulary Georgian has a rich word-derivation system. By using a root, and adding some definite prefixes and suffixes, one can derive many nouns and adjectives from the root. For example, from the root -kart-, the following words can be derived: Kartveli ('a Georgian person'), Kartuli ('the Georgian language') and Sakartvelo ('the country of Georgia'). Most Georgian surnames end in -dze 'son' (Western Georgia), -shvili 'child' (Eastern Georgia), -ia (Western Georgia, Samegrelo), -ani (Western Georgia, Svaneti), -uri (Eastern Georgia), etc. The ending -eli is a particle of nobility, comparable to French de, German von or Polish -skicode: pol promoted to code: pl . Georgian has a vigesimal numeric system like Basque and (partially) French. Numbers greater than 20 and less than 100 are described as the sum of the greatest possible multiple of 20 plus the remainder. For example, "93" literally translates as 'four times twenty plus thirteen' (ოთხმოცდაცამეტი, otkhmotsdatsamet’i). One of the most important Georgian dictionaries is the Explanatory dictionary of the Georgian language (ქართული ენის განმარტებითი ლექსიკონი). It consists of eight volumes and about 115,000 words. It was produced between 1950 and 1964, by a team of linguists under the direction of Arnold Chikobava. Examples Georgian has a word derivation system, which allows the derivation of nouns from verb roots both with prefixes and suffixes, for example: It is also possible to derive verbs from nouns: Likewise, verbs can be derived from adjectives, for example: In Georgian many nouns and adjectives begin with two or more contiguous consonants. This is because syllables in the language often begin with two consonants. Recordings are available on the relevant Wiktionary entries, linked to below. Sample text Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: See also References Bibliography External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Semitic_languages] | [TOKENS: 2563] |
Contents Northwest Semitic languages Northwest Semitic is a division of the Semitic languages comprising the indigenous languages of the Levant. It emerged from Proto-Semitic in the Early Bronze Age. It is first attested in proper names identified as Amorite in the Middle Bronze Age. The oldest coherent texts are in Ugaritic, dating to the Late Bronze Age, which by the time of the Bronze Age collapse are joined by Old Aramaic, and by the Iron Age by Sutean and the Canaanite languages (Hebrew, Phoenician/Punic, Edomite and Moabite). The term was coined by Carl Brockelmann in 1908, who separated Fritz Hommel's 1883 classification of Semitic languages into Northwest (Canaanite and Aramaic), East Semitic (Akkadian, its Assyrian and Babylonian dialects, Eblaite) and Southwest (Arabic, Old South Arabian languages and Abyssinian). Brockelmann's Canaanite sub-group includes Ugaritic, Phoenician and Hebrew. Some scholars now regard Ugaritic either as belonging to a separate branch of Northwest Semitic (alongside Canaanite) or a dialect of Amorite. Central Semitic is a proposed intermediate group comprising Northwest Semitic and Arabic. Central Semitic is either a subgroup of West Semitic or a top-level division of Semitic alongside East Semitic and South Semitic. SIL Ethnologue in its system of classification (of living languages only) eliminates Northwest Semitic entirely by joining Canaanite and Arabic in a "South-Central" group which together with Aramaic forms Central Semitic. The Deir Alla Inscription and Samalian have been identified as language varieties falling outside Aramaic proper but with some similarities to it, possibly in an "Aramoid" or "Syrian" subgroup. It is clear that the Taymanitic script expressed a distinct linguistic variety that is not Arabic and not closely related to Hismaic or Safaitic, while it can tentatively be suggested that it was more closely related to Northwest Semitic. Historical development The time period for the split of Northwest Semitic from Proto-Semitic or from other Semitic groups is uncertain. Richard C. Steiner suggested in 2011 that the earliest attestation of Northwest Semitic is to be found in snake spells from the Egyptian Pyramid Texts, dating to the mid-third millennium BC. However, other scholars question these findings. Amorite personal names and words in Akkadian and Egyptian texts from the late third millennium to the mid-second millennium BC and the language of the Proto-Sinaitic inscriptions dated to the first half of the second millennium otherwise constitute the earliest traces of Northwest Semitic, the first Northwest Semitic language attested in full being Ugaritic in the 14th century BC. During the early 1st millennium, the Phoenician language was spread throughout the Mediterranean by Phoenician colonists, most notably to Carthage in today's Tunisia. The Phoenician alphabet is of fundamental importance in human history as the source and ancestor of the Greek alphabet, the later Latin alphabet, the Aramaic (Square Hebrew), Syriac, and Arabic writing systems, Germanic runes, and ultimately Cyrillic. From the 8th century BC, the use of Imperial Aramaic by the Neo-Assyrian Empire (935–608 BC) and the succeeding Neo-Babylonian Empire (612–539 BC) and Achaemenid Empire (539–332 BC), a form of the Aramaic language, spread throughout the Northwest Semitic region of the Levant, northern regions of the Arabian peninsula and southern regions of Anatolia, and gradually drove most of the other Northwest Semitic languages to extinction. The ancient Judaeans adopted Aramaic for daily use, and parts of the Tanakh are written in it. Hebrew was preserved, however, as a Jewish liturgical language and language of scholarship, and resurrected in the 19th century, with modern adaptations, to become the Modern Hebrew language of the State of Israel. After the Muslim conquests of the 7th century, Arabic began to gradually replace Aramaic throughout the region. Classical Syriac-Aramaic survives today as the liturgical language of the Assyrian Church of the East, Syriac Orthodox Church, Chaldean Catholic Church, and other churches of Syriac Christians. It is spoken in modern dialects with an estimated one million fluent speakers by endangered indigenous populations scattered throughout the Middle East, most commonly by the Assyrians, Gnostic Mandeans, the Arameans (Syriacs) of Maaloula and Jubb'adin, and Mizrahi Jews. There is also an Aramaic substratum in Levantine and Mesopotamian Arabic. Phonology Phonologically, Ugaritic lost the sound *ṣ́, replacing it with /sˁ/ (ṣ) (the same shift occurred in Canaanite and Akkadian). That this same sound became /ʕ/ in Aramaic (although in Ancient Aramaic, it was written with qoph), suggests that Ugaritic is not the parent language of the group. An example of this sound shift can be seen in the word for earth: Ugaritic /ʔarsˁ/ (’arṣ), Punic /ʔarsˁ/ (’arṣ), Tiberian Hebrew /ʔɛrɛsˁ/ (’ereṣ), Biblical Hebrew /ʔarsˁ/ (’arṣ) and Aramaic /ʔarʕaː/ (’ar‘ā’). The vowel shift from *aː to /oː/ distinguishes Canaanite from Ugaritic. Also, in the Canaanite group, the series of Semitic interdental fricatives become sibilants: *ð (ḏ), *θ (ṯ) and *θ̣ (ṱ) became /z/, /ʃ/ (š) and /sˤ/ (ṣ) respectively. The effect of this sound shift can be seen by comparing the following words: Proto-Northwest Semitic had three contrastive vowel qualities and a length distinction, resulting in six vocalic phonemes: *a, *ā, *i, *ī, *u, and *ū. While *aw, *ay, *iw, *iy, *uw, and *uy are often referred to as diphthongs, they do not seem to have had a different status as such, rather being a normal sequence of a short vowel and a glide. Suchard proposes that: "*s, both from original *s and original *ṯ, then shifted further back to a postalveolar *š, while deaffrication of *ts and *dz to *s and *z gave these phonemes their Hebrew values, as well as merging original *dz with original *ḏ. In fact, original *s may have been realized as anything between [s] and [ʃ]; both values are attested in foreign transcriptions of early Northwest Semitic languages".[citation needed] In Proto-Northwest Semitic the emphatics were articulated with pharyngealization. Its shift to backing (as opposed to Proto-Semitic glottalization of emphatics) has been considered a Central Semitic innovation. According to Faber, the assimilation *-ṣt->-ṣṭ- in the Dt stem in Hebrew (hiṣṭaddēḳ ‘he declared himself righteous’) suggests backing rather than glottalization. The same assimilation is attested in Aramaic (yiṣṭabba ‘he will be moistened’). Grammar Three cases can be reconstructed for Proto-Northwest Semitic nouns (nominative, accusative, genitive), two genders (masculine, feminine) and three numbers (single, dual, plural). Proto-Northwest Semitic pronouns had 2 genders and 3 grammatical cases. nominative Reconstruction of Proto-Northwest Semitic numbers. The G fientive or G-stem (Hebrew qal) is the basic, most common, unmarked stem. The G-stem expresses events. The vowel of the prefix of the prefix conjugations in Proto-Northwest Semitic was *-a- and the stem was *-qṭul- or *-qṭil-, as in *ya-qṭul-u 'he will kill', while the stem of the suffix conjugation had two *a vowels, as in *qaṭal-a 'he has killed'. The G stative is like the fientive but expressing states instead of events. For the prefix conjugation of stative roots, the vowel of the prefix was *-i- and it contained an *a vowel, e.g. *yi-kbad-u 'he will become heavy', while the second vowel of the suffix conjugation was either *-i-, as in *kabid-a 'he is/was/will be heavy', or *-u-, as in *ʕamuq-a 'it is/was/will be deep'. Whether the G-stem stative suffix conjugation has *i or *u in the stem is lexically determined. The N-stem (Hebrew nip̄ʕal) is marked by a prefixed *n(a)-. It is mediopassive which is a grammatical voice that subsumes the meanings of both the middle voice and the passive voice. In other words, it expresses a range of meanings where the subject is the patient of the verb, e.g. passive, medial, and reciprocal. The stem of the suffix conjugation is *naqṭal-, and the stem of the prefix conjugations is *-nqaṭil-; as is the case with stative G-stem verbs, the prefix vowel is *-i-, resulting in forms like *yi-nqaṭil-u 'he will be killed'. The D-stem (Hebrew piʕel) is marked by gemination of the second radical in all forms. It has a range of different meanings, mostly transitive. The stem of the suffix conjugation is *qaṭṭil-, and the same stem is used for the prefix conjugations. It is not clear whether the Proto-Northwest-Semitic prefix vowel should be reconstructed as *-u-, the form inherited from Proto-Semitic (i.e. *yuqaṭṭil-u), or as *-a-, which is somewhat supported by evidence from Ugaritic and Hebrew (*yaqaṭṭil-u). The C-stem (Hebrew hip̄ʕil) more often than not expresses a causative meaning. The most likely reconstructions are *haqṭil- (from older *saqṭil-) for the stem of the suffix conjugation and *-saqṭil- for the stem of the prefix conjugations. The reconstructed prefix vowel is the same as that of the D-stem, and similarly, the participle is to be reconstructed as *musaqṭilum. All of the stems listed here, except the N-stem, could bring forth further derivation. The "internal passive stems" (Gp, Dp, and Cp; Hebrew passive qal, puʕal, and hɔp̄ʕal) aren't marked by affixes, but express their passivity through a different vowel pattern. The Gp prefix conjugation can be reconstructed as *yu-qṭal-u 'he will be killed'. Reflexive or reciprocal meanings can be expressed by the t-stems, formed with a *t which was either infixed after the first radical (Gt, Ct) or prefixed before it (tD). The precise reconstruction are uncertain. Notes Bibliography ʾ b g d h w z ḥ ṭ y k l m n s ʿ p ṣ q r š t |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilaki_language] | [TOKENS: 1502] |
Contents Gilaki language Gilaki (گیلٚکی زٚوان romanized: Gilɵki Zɵvon) is an Iranian language belonging to the Caspian subgroup of the Northwestern branch, spoken in south of Caspian Sea by Gilak people. Gilaki is closely related to Mazandarani. The two languages of Gilaki and Mazandarani have similar vocabularies. The Gilaki and Mazandarani languages (but not other Iranian languages) share certain typological features with Caucasian languages (specifically Kartvelian languages), reflecting the history, ethnic identity, and close relatedness to the Caucasus region and Caucasian peoples of the Gilak people and Mazandarani people. Classification The language is divided into three dialects: Western Gilaki, Eastern Gilaki and Galeshi/Deylami. The western and eastern dialects are separated by the Sefid River, while Galeshi is spoken in the mountains of eastern Gilan and western Mazandaran. There are three main dialects but larger cities in Gilan have slight variations to the way they speak. These "sub-dialects" are Rashti, Rudbari, Some’e Sarai, Lahijani, Langerudi, Rudesari, Bandar Anzali, Fumani, Alamouti and Taleghani. Progressing to the east, Gilaki gradually blends into Mazandarani. The intermediate dialects of the area between Tonokābon and Kalārdašt serve as a transition between Gilaki and Mazandarani. The differences in forms and vocabulary lead to a low mutual intelligibility with either Gilaki or Mazandarani, and so these dialects should probably be considered a third separate language group of the Caspian area. In Mazandaran, Gilaki is spoken in the city of Ramsar and Tonekabon. Although the dialect is influenced by Mazandarani, it is still considered a Gilaki dialect. Furthermore, the eastern Gilaki dialect is spoken throughout the valley of the Chalus river. In Qazvin province, Gilaki is spoken in northern parts of the province, in Alamut. Grammar Gilaki, is an inflected and genderless language. It is considered SVO, although in sentences employing certain tenses the order may be SOV. Dispersion Gilaki is the language of the majority of people in Gilan province and also a native and well-known language in Mazandaran, Qazvin and Alborz provinces. Gilaki is spoken in different regions with different dialects and accents. The number of Gilaki speakers is estimated at 5-6 million. Ethnologue reports that the use of Gilaki is increasing as the speaker population increases. Phonology Gilaki has the same consonants as Persian, but different vowels. Here is a table of correspondences for the Western Gilaki of Rasht, which will be the variety used in the remainder of the article: There are nine vowel phonemes in the Gilaki language: The consonants are: Verb system The verb system of Gilaki is very similar to that of Persian. All infinitives end in -tən/-dən, or in -V:n, where V: is a long vowel (from contraction of an original *-Vdən). The present stem is usually related to the infinitive, and the past stem is just the infinitive without -ən or -n (in the case of vowel stems). From the infinitive dín, "to see", we get present stem din-. The present indicative is formed by adding the personal endings to this stem: The present subjunctive is formed with the prefix bí-, bú-, or bə- (depending on the vowel in the stem) added to the indicative forms. Final /e/ neutralizes to /ə/ in the 3rd singular and the plural invariably lacks final /i/. The negative of both the indicative and the subjunctive is formed in the same way, with n- instead of the b- of the subjunctive. From xurdən, "to eat", we get the perfect stem xurd. To this are added unaccented personal endings and the unaccented b- prefix (or accented n- for the negative): The imperfect is formed with what was originally a suffix -i: The pluperfect is paraphrastically formed with the verb bon, "to be", and the past participle, which is in turn formed with the perfect stem+ə (which can assimilate to become i or u). The accent can fall on the last syllable of the participle or on the stem itself: A curious innovation of Western Gilaki is the past subjunctive, which is formed with the (artificial) imperfect of bon+past participle: This form is often found in the protasis and apodosis of unreal conditions, e.g., mən agə Əkbəra bidé bim, xušhal bubosti bim, "If I were to see/saw/had seen Akbar, I would be happy". There are two very common paraphrastic constructions for the present and past progressives. From the infinitive šon, "to go", we get: There are many compound verbs in Gilaki, whose forms differ slightly from simple verbs. Most notably, bV- is never prefixed onto the stem, and the negative prefix nV- can act like an infix -n-, coming between the prefix and the stem. So from fagiftən, "to get", we get present indicative fagirəm, but present subjunctive fágirəm, and the negative of both, faángirəm or fanígirəm. The same applies to the negative of the past tenses: fángiftəm or fanígiftəm. Nouns, cases and postpositions Gilaki employs a combination of quasi-case endings and postpositions to do the work of many particles and prepositions in English and Persian. There are essentially three "cases" in Gilaki, the nominative (or, better, unmarked, as it can serve other grammatical functions), the genitive, and the (definite) accusative. The accusative form is often used to express the simple indirect object in addition to the direct object. A noun in the genitive comes before the word it modifies. These "cases" are in origin actually just particles, similar to Persian ra. For the word "per", father, we have: The genitive can change to -i, especially before some postpositions. The 1st and 2nd person pronouns have special forms: The 3rd person (demonstrative) pronouns are regular: /un/, /u.ˈʃan/, /i.ˈʃan/ With the genitive can be combined many postpositions. Examples: The personal pronouns have special forms with "-re": mere, tere, etc. Adjectives Gilaki adjectives come before the noun they modify, and may have the genitive "case ending" -ə/-i. They do not agree with the nouns they modify. Notes Further reading External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annelid] | [TOKENS: 8774] |
Contents Annelid Cladistic view Traditional view incertae sedis The annelids (/ˈænəlɪdz/), also known as the segmented worms, are animals that comprise the phylum Annelida (/əˈnɛlɪdə/; from Latin anellus 'little ring').[a] The phylum contains over 22,000 extant species, including ragworms, earthworms, and leeches. The species exist in and have adapted to various ecologies – some in marine environments as distinct as tidal zones and hydrothermal vents, others in fresh water, and yet others in moist terrestrial environments. The annelids are bilaterally symmetrical, triploblastic, coelomate, invertebrate organisms. They also have parapodia for locomotion. Most textbooks still use the traditional division into Polychaetes (almost all marine), Oligochaetes (which include earthworms) and Hirudinea (leech-like species). Cladistic research since 1997 has radically changed this scheme, viewing leeches as a sub-group of oligochaetes and oligochaetes as a sub-group of polychaetes. In addition, the Pogonophora, Echiura and Sipuncula, previously regarded as separate phyla, are now regarded as sub-groups of polychaetes. Annelids are considered members of the Lophotrochozoa, a "super-phylum" of protostomes that also includes molluscs, brachiopods, and nemerteans. The basic annelid form consists of multiple segments called metameres. Each segment has the same sets of organs and, in most polychaetes, has a pair of parapodia that many species use for locomotion. Septa separate the segments of many species, but are poorly defined or absent in others, and Echiura and Sipuncula show no obvious signs of segmentation. In species with well-developed septa, the blood circulates entirely within blood vessels, and the vessels in segments near the front ends of these species are often built up with muscles that act as hearts. The septa of such species also enable them to change the shapes of individual segments, which facilitates movement by peristalsis ("ripples" that pass along the body) or by undulations that improve the effectiveness of the parapodia. In species with incomplete septa or none, the blood circulates through the main body cavity without any kind of pump, and there is a wide range of locomotory techniques – some burrowing species turn their pharynges inside out to drag themselves through the sediment. Earthworms are oligochaetes that support terrestrial food chains both as prey and predators, and in some regions are important in aeration and enriching of soil. The burrowing of marine polychaetes, which may constitute up to a third of all species in near-shore environments, encourages the development of ecosystems by enabling water and oxygen to penetrate the sea floor. In addition to improving soil fertility, annelids serve humans as food and as bait. Scientists observe annelids to monitor the quality of marine and fresh water. Although blood-letting is used less frequently by doctors than it once was, some leech species are regarded as endangered because they have been over-harvested for this purpose in the last few centuries. Ragworms' jaws are studied by engineers as they offer an exceptional combination of lightness and strength. Since annelids are soft-bodied, their fossils are rare – mostly jaws and the mineralized tubes that some of the species secreted. Although some late Ediacaran fossils may represent annelids, the oldest known fossil that is identified with confidence comes from about 518 million years ago in the early Cambrian period. Fossils of most modern mobile polychaete groups appeared by the end of the Carboniferous, about 299 million years ago. Palaeontologists disagree about whether some body fossils from the mid Ordovician, about 472 to 461 million years ago, are the remains of oligochaetes, and the earliest indisputable fossils of the group appear in the Paleogene period, which began 66 million years ago. Classification and diversity There are over 22,000 living annelid species, ranging in size from microscopic to the Australian giant Gippsland earthworm and Amynthas mekongianus, which can both grow up to 3 meters (9.8 ft) long to the largest annelid, Microchaetus rappi which can grow up to 6.7 m (22 ft). Although research since 1997 has radically changed scientists' views about the evolutionary family tree of the annelids, most textbooks use the traditional classification into the following sub-groups: Some other groups of animals have been classified in various ways, but are now widely regarded as annelids: Mitogenomic and phylogenomic analysis also implies that Orthonectida, a group of extremely simplified parasites traditionally placed in Mesozoa, are actually reduced annelids. Research suggest that also nemerteans are annelids, with Oweniidae and Magelonidae as their closest relatives. Distinguishing features No single feature distinguishes annelids from other invertebrate phyla, but they have a distinctive combination of features. Their bodies are long, with segments that are divided externally by shallow ring-like constrictions called annuli and internally by septa ("partitions") at the same points, although in some species the septa are incomplete and in a few cases missing. Most of the segments contain the same sets of organs, although sharing a common gut, circulatory system and nervous system makes them inter-dependent. Their bodies are covered by a cuticle (outer covering) that does not contain cells but is secreted by cells in the skin underneath, is made of tough but flexible collagen and does not molt – on the other hand arthropods' cuticles are made of the more rigid α-chitin, and molt until the arthropods reach their full size. Most annelids have closed circulatory systems, where the blood makes its entire circuit via blood vessels. Description In addition to Sipuncula and Echiura, also lineages like Lobatocerebrum, Diurodrilus and Polygordius have lost their segmentation, but these are the exceptions from the rule. Most of an annelid's body consists of segments that are practically identical, having the same sets of internal organs and external chaetae (Greek χαιτη, meaning "hair") and, in some species, appendages. The frontmost and rearmost sections are not regarded as true segments as they do not contain the standard sets of organs and do not develop in the same way as the true segments. The frontmost section, called the prostomium (Greek προ- meaning "in front of" and στομα meaning "mouth") contains the brain and sense organs, while the rearmost, called the pygidium (Greek πυγιδιον, meaning "little tail") or periproct contains the anus, generally on the underside. The first section behind the prostomium, called the peristomium (Greek περι- meaning "around" and στομα meaning "mouth"), is regarded by some zoologists as not a true segment, but in some polychaetes the peristomium has chetae and appendages like those of other segments. The segments develop one at a time from a growth zone just ahead of the pygidium, so that an annelid's youngest segment is just in front of the growth zone while the peristomium is the oldest. This pattern is called teloblastic growth. Some groups of annelids, including all leeches, have fixed maximum numbers of segments, while others add segments throughout their lives. The phylum's name is derived from the Latin word annelus, meaning "little ring". Annelids' cuticles are made of collagen fibers, usually in layers that spiral in alternating directions so that the fibers cross each other. These are secreted by the one-cell deep epidermis (outermost skin layer). A few marine annelids that live in tubes lack cuticles, but their tubes have a similar structure, and mucus-secreting glands in the epidermis protect their skins. Under the epidermis is the dermis, which is made of connective tissue, in other words a combination of cells and non-cellular materials such as collagen. Below this are two layers of muscles, which develop from the lining of the coelom (body cavity): circular muscles make a segment longer and slimmer when they contract, while under them are longitudinal muscles, usually four distinct strips, whose contractions make the segment shorter and fatter. But several families have lost the circular muscles, and it has been suggested that the lack of circular muscles is a plesiomorphic character in Annelida. Some annelids also have oblique internal muscles that connect the underside of the body to each side. The setae ("hairs") of annelids project out from the epidermis to provide traction and other capabilities. The simplest are unjointed and form paired bundles near the top and bottom of each side of each segment. The parapodia ("limbs") of annelids that have them often bear more complex chetae at their tips – for example jointed, comb-like or hooked. Chetae are made of moderately flexible β-chitin and are formed by follicles, each of which has a chetoblast ("hair-forming") cell at the bottom and muscles that can extend or retract the cheta. The chetoblasts produce chetae by forming microvilli, fine hair-like extensions that increase the area available for secreting the cheta. When the cheta is complete, the microvilli withdraw into the chetoblast, leaving parallel tunnels that run almost the full length of the cheta. Hence annelids' chetae are structurally different from the setae ("bristles") of arthropods, which are made of the more rigid α-chitin, have a single internal cavity, and are mounted on flexible joints in shallow pits in the cuticle. Nearly all polychaetes have parapodia that function as limbs, while other major annelid groups lack them. Parapodia are unjointed paired extensions of the body wall, and their muscles are derived from the circular muscles of the body. They are often supported internally by one or more large, thick chetae. The parapodia of burrowing and tube-dwelling polychaetes are often just ridges whose tips bear hooked chetae. In active crawlers and swimmers the parapodia are often divided into large upper and lower paddles on a very short trunk, and the paddles are generally fringed with chetae and sometimes with cirri (fused bundles of cilia) and gills. The brain generally forms a ring round the pharynx (throat), consisting of a pair of ganglia (local control centers) above and in front of the pharynx, linked by double ventral nerve cords either side of the pharynx to another pair of ganglia just below and behind it. The brains of polychaetes are generally in the prostomium, while those of clitellates are in the peristomium or sometimes the first segment behind the prostomium. In some very mobile and active polychaetes the brain is enlarged and more complex, with visible hindbrain, midbrain and forebrain sections. The rest of the central nervous system, the ventral nerve cord, is generally "ladder-like", consisting of a pair of nerve cords that run through the bottom part of the body and have in each segment paired ganglia linked by a transverse connection. From each segmental ganglion a branching system of local nerves runs into the body wall and then encircles the body. However, in most polychaetes the two main nerve cords are fused, and in the tube-dwelling genus Owenia the single nerve chord has no ganglia and is located in the epidermis. As in arthropods, each muscle fiber (cell) is controlled by more than one neuron, and the speed and power of the fiber's contractions depends on the combined effects of all its neurons. Vertebrates have a different system, in which one neuron controls a group of muscle fibers. Most annelids' longitudinal nerve trunks include giant axons (the output signal lines of nerve cells). Their large diameter decreases their resistance, which allows them to transmit signals exceptionally fast. This enables these worms to withdraw rapidly from danger by shortening their bodies. Experiments have shown that cutting the giant axons prevents this escape response but does not affect normal movement. The sensors are primarily single cells that detect light, chemicals, pressure waves and contact, and are present on the head, appendages (if any) and other parts of the body. Nuchal ("on the neck") organs are paired, ciliated structures found only in polychaetes, and are thought to be chemosensors. Some polychaetes also have various combinations of ocelli ("little eyes") that detect the direction from which light is coming and camera eyes or compound eyes that can probably form images. The compound eyes probably evolved independently of arthropods' eyes. Some tube-worms use ocelli widely spread over their bodies to detect the shadows of fish, so that they can quickly withdraw into their tubes. Some burrowing and tube-dwelling polychaetes have statocysts (tilt and balance sensors) that indicate which way is down. A few polychaete genera have on the undersides of their heads palps that are used both in feeding and as "feelers", and some of these also have antennae that are structurally similar but probably are used mainly as "feelers". Most annelids have a pair of coelomata (body cavities) in each segment, separated from other segments by septa and from each other by vertical mesenteries. Each septum forms a sandwich with connective tissue in the middle and mesothelium (membrane that serves as a lining) from the preceding and following segments on either side. Each mesentery is similar except that the mesothelium is the lining of each of the pair of coelomata, and the blood vessels and, in polychaetes, the main nerve cords are embedded in it. The mesothelium is made of modified epitheliomuscular cells; in other words, their bodies form part of the epithelium but their bases extend to form muscle fibers in the body wall. The mesothelium may also form radial and circular muscles on the septa, and circular muscles around the blood vessels and gut. Parts of the mesothelium, especially on the outside of the gut, may also form chloragogen cells that perform similar functions to the livers of vertebrates: producing and storing glycogen and fat; producing the oxygen-carrier hemoglobin; breaking down proteins; and turning nitrogenous waste products into ammonia and urea to be excreted. Many annelids move by peristalsis (waves of contraction and expansion that sweep along the body), or flex the body while using parapodia to crawl or swim. In these animals the septa enable the circular and longitudinal muscles to change the shape of individual segments, by making each segment a separate fluid-filled "balloon". However, the septa are often incomplete in annelids that are semi-sessile or that do not move by peristalsis or by movements of parapodia – for example some move by whipping movements of the body, some small marine species move by means of cilia (fine muscle-powered hairs) and some burrowers turn their pharynges (throats) inside out to penetrate the sea-floor and drag themselves into it. The fluid in the coelomata contains coelomocyte cells that defend the animals against parasites and infections. In some species coelomocytes may also contain a respiratory pigment – red hemoglobin in some species, green chlorocruorin in others (dissolved in the plasma) – and provide oxygen transport within their segments. Respiratory pigment is also dissolved in the blood plasma. Species with well-developed septa generally also have blood vessels running all long their bodies above and below the gut, the upper one carrying blood forwards while the lower one carries it backwards. Networks of capillaries in the body wall and around the gut transfer blood between the main blood vessels and to parts of the segment that need oxygen and nutrients. Both of the major vessels, especially the upper one, can pump blood by contracting. In some annelids the forward end of the upper blood vessel is enlarged with muscles to form a heart, while in the forward ends of many earthworms some of the vessels that connect the upper and lower main vessels function as hearts. Species with poorly developed or no septa generally have no blood vessels and rely on the circulation within the coelom for delivering nutrients and oxygen. However, leeches and their closest relatives have a body structure that is very uniform within the group but significantly different from that of other annelids, including other members of the Clitellata. In leeches there are no septa, the connective tissue layer of the body wall is so thick that it occupies much of the body, and the two coelomata are widely separated and run the length of the body. They function as the main blood vessels, although they are side-by-side rather than upper and lower. However, they are lined with mesothelium, like the coelomata and unlike the blood vessels of other annelids. Leeches generally use suckers at their front and rear ends to move like inchworms. The anus is on the upper surface of the pygidium. In some annelids, including earthworms, all respiration is via the skin. However, many polychaetes and some clitellates (the group to which earthworms belong) have gills associated with most segments, often as extensions of the parapodia in polychaetes. The gills of tube-dwellers and burrowers usually cluster around whichever end has the stronger water flow. Feeding structures in the mouth region vary widely, and have little correlation with the animals' diets. Many polychaetes have a muscular pharynx that can be everted (turned inside out to extend it). In these animals the foremost few segments often lack septa so that, when the muscles in these segments contract, the sharp increase in fluid pressure from all these segments everts the pharynx very quickly. Two families, the Eunicidae and Phyllodocidae, have evolved jaws, which can be used for seizing prey, biting off pieces of vegetation, or grasping dead and decaying matter. On the other hand, some predatory polychaetes have neither jaws nor eversible pharynges. Selective deposit feeders generally live in tubes on the sea-floor and use palps to find food particles in the sediment and then wipe them into their mouths. Filter feeders use "crowns" of palps covered in cilia that wash food particles towards their mouths. Non-selective deposit feeders ingest soil or marine sediments via mouths that are generally unspecialized. Some clitellates have sticky pads in the roofs of their mouths, and some of these can evert the pads to capture prey. Leeches often have an eversible proboscis, or a muscular pharynx with two or three teeth. The gut is generally an almost straight tube supported by the mesenteries (vertical partitions within segments), and ends with the anus on the underside of the pygidium. However, in members of the tube-dwelling family Siboglinidae the gut is blocked by a swollen lining that houses symbiotic bacteria, which can make up 15% of the worms' total weight. The bacteria convert inorganic matter – such as hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide from hydrothermal vents, or methane from seeps – to organic matter that feeds themselves and their hosts, while the worms extend their palps into the gas flows to absorb the gases needed by the bacteria. Annelids with blood vessels use metanephridia to remove soluble waste products, while those without use protonephridia. Both of these systems use a two-stage filtration process, in which fluid and waste products are first extracted and these are filtered again to re-absorb any re-usable materials while dumping toxic and spent materials as urine. The difference is that protonephridia combine both filtration stages in the same organ, while metanephridia perform only the second filtration and rely on other mechanisms for the first – in annelids special filter cells in the walls of the blood vessels let fluids and other small molecules pass into the coelomic fluid, where it circulates to the metanephridia. In annelids the points at which fluid enters the protonephridia or metanephridia are on the forward side of a septum while the second-stage filter and the nephridiopore (exit opening in the body wall) are in the following segment. As a result, the hindmost segment (before the growth zone and pygidium) has no structure that extracts its wastes, as there is no following segment to filter and discharge them, while the first segment contains an extraction structure that passes wastes to the second, but does not contain the structures that re-filter and discharge urine. Polychaetes can reproduce asexually, by dividing into two or more pieces or by budding off a new individual while the parent remains a complete organism. Some oligochaetes, such as Aulophorus furcatus, seem to reproduce entirely asexually, while others reproduce asexually in summer and sexually in autumn. Asexual reproduction in oligochaetes is always by dividing into two or more pieces, rather than by budding. However, leeches have never been seen reproducing asexually. Most polychaetes and oligochaetes also use similar mechanisms to regenerate after suffering damage. Two polychaete genera, Chaetopterus and Dodecaceria, can regenerate from a single segment, and others can regenerate even if their heads are removed. Annelids are the most complex animals that can regenerate after such severe damage. On the other hand, leeches cannot regenerate. It is thought that annelids were originally animals with two separate sexes, which released ova and sperm into the water via their nephridia. The fertilized eggs develop into trochophore larvae, which live as plankton. Later they sink to the sea-floor and metamorphose into miniature adults: the part of the trochophore between the apical tuft and the prototroch becomes the prostomium (head); a small area round the trochophore's anus becomes the pygidium (tail-piece); a narrow band immediately in front of that becomes the growth zone that produces new segments; and the rest of the trochophore becomes the peristomium (the segment that contains the mouth). However, the lifecycles of most living polychaetes, which are almost all marine animals, are unknown, and only about 25% of the 300+ species whose lifecycles are known follow this pattern. About 14% use a similar external fertilization but produce yolk-rich eggs, which reduce the time the larva needs to spend among the plankton, or eggs from which miniature adults emerge rather than larvae. The rest care for the fertilized eggs until they hatch – some by producing jelly-covered masses of eggs which they tend, some by attaching the eggs to their bodies and a few species by keeping the eggs within their bodies until they hatch. These species use a variety of methods for sperm transfer; for example, in some the females collect sperm released into the water, while in others the males have a penis that inject sperm into the female. There is no guarantee that this is a representative sample of polychaetes' reproductive patterns, and it simply reflects scientists' current knowledge. Some polychaetes breed only once in their lives, while others breed almost continuously or through several breeding seasons. While most polychaetes remain of one sex all their lives, a significant percentage of species are full hermaphrodites or change sex during their lives. Most polychaetes whose reproduction has been studied lack permanent gonads, and it is uncertain how they produce ova and sperm. In a few species the rear of the body splits off and becomes a separate individual that lives just long enough to swim to a suitable environment, usually near the surface, and spawn. Most mature clitellates (the group that includes earthworms and leeches) are full hermaphrodites, although in a few leech species younger adults function as males and become female at maturity. All have well-developed gonads, and all copulate. Earthworms store their partners' sperm in spermathecae ("sperm stores") and then the clitellum produces a cocoon that collects ova from the ovaries and then sperm from the spermathecae. Fertilization and development of earthworm eggs takes place in the cocoon. Leeches' eggs are fertilized in the ovaries, and then transferred to the cocoon. In all clitellates the cocoon also either produces yolk when the eggs are fertilized or nutrients while they are developing. All clitellates hatch as miniature adults rather than larvae. Ecological significance Charles Darwin's book The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms (1881) presented the first scientific analysis of earthworms' contributions to soil fertility. Some burrow while others live entirely on the surface, generally in moist leaf litter. The burrowers loosen the soil so that oxygen and water can penetrate it, and both surface and burrowing worms help to produce soil by mixing organic and mineral matter, by accelerating the decomposition of organic matter and thus making it more quickly available to other organisms, and by concentrating minerals and converting them to forms that plants can use more easily. Earthworms are also important prey for birds ranging in size from robins to storks, and for mammals ranging from shrews to badgers, and in some cases conserving earthworms may be essential for conserving endangered birds. Terrestrial annelids can be invasive in some situations. In the glaciated areas of North America, for example, almost all native earthworms are thought to have been killed by the glaciers and the worms currently found in those areas are all introduced from other areas, primarily from Europe, and, more recently, from Asia. Northern hardwood forests are especially negatively impacted by invasive worms through the loss of leaf duff, soil fertility, changes in soil chemistry and the loss of ecological diversity. Especially of concern is Amynthas agrestis and at least one state (Wisconsin) has listed it as a prohibited species. Earthworms migrate only a limited distance annually on their own, and the spread of invasive worms is increased rapidly by anglers and from worms or their cocoons in the dirt on vehicle tires or footwear. Marine annelids may account for over one-third of bottom-dwelling animal species around coral reefs and in tidal zones. Burrowing species increase the penetration of water and oxygen into the sea-floor sediment, which encourages the growth of populations of aerobic bacteria and small animals alongside their burrows. Although blood-sucking leeches do little direct harm to their victims, some transmit flagellates that can be very dangerous to their hosts. Some small tube-dwelling oligochaetes transmit myxosporean parasites that cause whirling disease in fish. Interaction with humans Earthworms make a significant contribution to soil fertility. The rear end of the Palolo worm, a marine polychaete that tunnels through coral, detaches in order to spawn at the surface, and the people of Samoa regard these spawning modules as a delicacy. Anglers sometimes find that worms are more effective bait than artificial flies, and worms can be kept for several days in a tin lined with damp moss. Ragworms are commercially important as bait and as food sources for aquaculture, and there have been proposals to farm them in order to reduce over-fishing of their natural populations. Some marine polychaetes' predation on molluscs causes serious losses to fishery and aquaculture operations. Scientists study aquatic annelids to monitor the oxygen content, salinity and pollution levels in fresh and marine water. Accounts of the use of leeches for the medically dubious practice of blood-letting have come from China around 30 AD, India around 200 AD, ancient Rome around 50 AD and later throughout Europe. In the 19th century medical demand for leeches was so high that some areas' stocks were exhausted and other regions imposed restrictions or bans on exports, and Hirudo medicinalis is treated as an endangered species by both IUCN and CITES. More recently leeches have been used to assist in microsurgery, and their saliva has provided anti-inflammatory compounds and several important anticoagulants, one of which also prevents tumors from spreading.. One particularly important microsurgical application is when fingers, toes, or ears are cut off, in which arteries can easily be mended but not veins; the leeches can help control this congestion until the veins can grow back into the appendage to be healed. Ragworms' jaws are strong but much lighter than the hard parts of many other organisms, which are biomineralized with calcium salts. These advantages have attracted the attention of engineers. Investigations showed that ragworm jaws are made of unusual proteins that bind strongly to zinc. Evolutionary history Since annelids are soft-bodied, their fossils are rare. Polychaetes' fossil record consists mainly of the jaws that some species had and the mineralized tubes that some secreted. Some Ediacaran fossils such as Dickinsonia in some ways resemble polychaetes, but the similarities are too vague for these fossils to be classified with confidence. The small shelly fossil Cloudina, from 549 to 542 million years ago, has been classified by some authors as an annelid, but by others as a cnidarian (i.e. in the phylum to which jellyfish and sea anemones belong). Until 2008 the earliest fossils widely accepted as annelids were the polychaetes Canadia and Burgessochaeta, both from Canada's Burgess Shale, formed about 505 million years ago in the Middle Cambrian. Myoscolex, found in Australia and a little older than the Burgess Shale, was possibly an annelid. However, it lacks some typical annelid features and has features which are not usually found in annelids and some of which are associated with other phyla. Then Simon Conway Morris and John Peel reported Phragmochaeta from Sirius Passet, about 518 million years old, and concluded that it was the oldest annelid known to date. There has been vigorous debate about whether the Burgess Shale fossil Wiwaxia was a mollusc or an annelid. Polychaetes diversified in the early Ordovician, about 488 to 474 million years ago. It is not until the early Ordovician that the first annelid jaws are found, thus the crown-group cannot have appeared before this date and probably appeared somewhat later. By the end of the Carboniferous, about 299 million years ago, fossils of most of the modern mobile polychaete groups had appeared. Many fossil tubes look like those made by modern sessile polychaetes, but the first tubes clearly produced by polychaetes date from the Jurassic, less than 199 million years ago. In 2012, a 508 million year old species of annelid found near the Burgess Shale beds in British Columbia, Kootenayscolex, was found that changed the hypotheses about how the annelid head developed. It appears to have bristles on its head segment akin to those along its body, as if the head simply developed as a specialized version of a previously generic segment. An even earlier fossil, Wenghuiia, was discovered in 2010 from the Ediacaran Doushantuo Formation around 555 Ma, and as this genus resembles relatively derived annelids this suggests their origins are even further back. The earliest good evidence for oligochaetes occurs in the Tertiary period, which began 65 million years ago, and it has been suggested that these animals evolved around the same time as flowering plants in the early Cretaceous, from 130 to 90 million years ago. A trace fossil consisting of a convoluted burrow partly filled with small fecal pellets may be evidence that earthworms were present in the early Triassic period from 251 to 245 million years ago. Body fossils going back to the mid Ordovician, from 472 to 461 million years ago, have been tentatively classified as oligochaetes, but these identifications are uncertain and some have been disputed. Traditionally the annelids have been divided into two major groups, the polychaetes and clitellates. In turn the clitellates were divided into oligochaetes, which include earthworms, and hirudinomorphs, whose best-known members are leeches. For many years there was no clear arrangement of the approximately 80 polychaete families into higher-level groups. In 1997 Greg Rouse and Kristian Fauchald attempted a "first heuristic step in terms of bringing polychaete systematics to an acceptable level of rigour", based on anatomical structures, and divided polychaetes into: Echiura Euarthropoda Onychophora Sabellida Terebellida Spionida Phyllodocida Eunicida Scolecida Sipuncula some "Scolecida" and "Aciculata" some "Canalipalpata" Sipuncula, previously a separate phylum some "Oligochaeta" Hirudinea (leeches) some "Oligochaeta" some "Oligochaeta" Aeolosomatidae some "Scolecida" and "Canalipalpata" some "Scolecida" Echiura, previously a separate phylum some "Scolecida" some "Canalipalpata" Siboglinidae, previously phylum Pogonophora some "Canalipalpata" some "Scolecida", "Canalipalpata" and "Aciculata" Annelid groups and phyla incorporated into Annelida (2007; simplified).Highlights major changes to traditional classifications. Also in 1997 Damhnait McHugh, using molecular phylogenetics to compare similarities and differences in one gene, presented a very different view, in which: the clitellates were an offshoot of one branch of the polychaete family tree; the pogonophorans and echiurans, which for a few decades had been regarded as a separate phyla, were placed on other branches of the polychaete tree. Subsequent molecular phylogenetics analyses on a similar scale presented similar conclusions. In 2007 Torsten Struck and colleagues compared three genes in 81 taxa, of which nine were outgroups, in other words not considered closely related to annelids but included to give an indication of where the organisms under study are placed on the larger tree of life. For a cross-check the study used an analysis of 11 genes (including the original 3) in ten taxa. This analysis agreed that clitellates, pogonophorans and echiurans were on various branches of the polychaete family tree. It also concluded that the classification of polychaetes into Scolecida, Canalipalpata and Aciculata was useless, as the members of these alleged groups were scattered all over the family tree derived from comparing the 81 taxa. It also placed sipunculans, generally regarded at the time as a separate phylum, on another branch of the polychaete tree, and concluded that leeches were a sub-group of oligochaetes rather than their sister-group among the clitellates. Rouse accepted the analyses based on molecular phylogenetics, and their main conclusions are now the scientific consensus, although the details of the annelid family tree remain uncertain. In addition to re-writing the classification of annelids and three previously independent phyla, the molecular phylogenetics analyses undermine the emphasis that decades of previous writings placed on the importance of segmentation in the classification of invertebrates. Polychaetes, which these analyses found to be the parent group, have completely segmented bodies, while polychaetes' echiurans and sipunculan offshoots are not segmented and pogonophores are segmented only in the rear parts of their bodies. It now seems that segmentation can appear and disappear much more easily in the course of evolution than was previously thought. The 2007 study also noted that the ladder-like nervous system, which is associated with segmentation, is less universal than previously thought in both annelids and arthropods.[b] The updated phylogenetic tree of the annelid phylum is comprised by a grade of basal groups of polychaetes: Palaeoannelida, Chaetopteriformia and the Amphinomida/Sipuncula/Lobatocerebrum clade. This grade is followed by Pleistoannelida, the clade containing nearly all of annelid diversity, divided into two highly diverse groups: Sedentaria and Errantia. Sedentaria contains the clitellates, pogonophorans, echiurans and some archiannelids, as well as several polychaete groups. Errantia contains the eunicid and phyllodocid polychaetes, and several archiannelids. Some small groups, such as the Myzostomida, are more difficult to place due to long branching, but belong to either one of these large groups. Oweniidae Magelonidae Apistobranchus Psammodrilidae Chaetopteridae Amphinomida Lobatocerebrum Sipuncula Eunicida Phyllodocida Polygordiidae Protodrilida Myzostomida Orbiniida Cirratuliformia Siboglinidae (pogonophorans) Sabellida Spionida Opheliida Capitellidae Echiura Terebelliformia Maldanomorpha Clitellata (oligochaetes, leeches...) Annelids are members of the protostomes, one of the two major superphyla of bilaterian animals – the other is the deuterostomes, which includes vertebrates. Within the protostomes, annelids used to be grouped with arthropods under the super-group Articulata ("jointed animals"), as segmentation is obvious in most members of both phyla. However, the genes that drive segmentation in arthropods do not appear to do the same in annelids. Arthropods and annelids both have close relatives that are unsegmented. It is at least as easy to assume that they evolved segmented bodies independently as it is to assume that the ancestral protostome or bilaterian was segmented and that segmentation disappeared in many descendant phyla. The current view is that annelids are grouped with molluscs, brachiopods and several other phyla that have lophophores (fan-like feeding structures) and/or trochophore larvae as members of Lophotrochozoa. Meanwhile, arthropods are now regarded as members of the Ecdysozoa ("animals that molt"), along with some phyla that are unsegmented. Acoelomorpha (Acoela and Nemertodermatida) Deuterostomia (Ambulacrarians and chordates) Ecdysozoa (Arthropods, etc.) Gnathifera Rouphozoa Mesozoa Cycliophora Annelida Mollusca Brachiopoda Phoronida Entoprocta Ectoprocta Nemertea The "Lophotrochozoa" hypothesis is also supported by the fact that many phyla within this group, including annelids, molluscs, nemerteans and flatworms, follow a similar pattern in the fertilized egg's development. When their cells divide after the 4-cell stage, descendants of these four cells form a spiral pattern. In these phyla the "fates" of the embryo's cells, in other words the roles their descendants will play in the adult animal, are the same and can be predicted from a very early stage. Hence this development pattern is often described as "spiral determinate cleavage". Fossil discoveries lead to the hypothesis that Annelida and the lophophorates are more closely related to each other than any other phyla. Because of the body plan of lophotrochozoan fossils, a phylogenetic analysis found the lophophorates as the sister group of annelids. Both groups share in common: the presence of chaetae secreted by microvilli; paired, metameric coelomic compartments; and a similar metanephridial structure. Nemertea †Wiwaxia †Kimberella Mollusca †Phragmochaeta Annelida †Wufengella Phoronida Bryozoa †"Tommotiids" Brachiopoda Notes References External links |
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