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a65e6751604dd3c3c01adfb7dc780d44 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ilmarinen | Ilmarinen | Ilmarinen
Ilmarinen, one of the chief deities in Finno-Ugric religion, functioning both as creator deity and as weather god. He forged the sampo, a world pillar that supports the sky, and hammered the firmament itself. He is often mentioned in mythic songs as working in a smithy with no door or windows and without any tools except those he magically creates from his own clothes, using his knee as an anvil. In this role he has similarities with the Sami Veralden-radien, who is also associated with the sampo.
In his capacity as weather deity, Ilmarinen is responsible for the giving of rain and wind. He performs a function similar to that of Biegg-olmai, the wind man of the Sami, who is represented by a statue with a shovel and club in his hands for scooping out snow, ice, or rain from his abode. The Sami of Finnmark in northern Norway use the name Ilmaris, referring to a deity who brings storms and bad weather. The earliest reference to Ilmarinen is the list of Finnish deities compiled in 1551 by Mikael Agricola (c. 1510–57), the Lutheran bishop who developed written Finnish. Agricola identified Ilmarinen specifically as a weather god who aids travelers on their journeys. Etymologically the word ilma can be connected with other Finno-Ugric words for sky, including the Votyak word im, the Zyryan word jen, and the Vogul word ilem.
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57cf9325306e54ad5b95126d6c4d005f | https://www.britannica.com/topic/iltizam-tax-system | Iltizām | Iltizām
Iltizām, in the Ottoman Empire, taxation system carried out by farming of public revenue. The state auctioned taxation rights to the highest bidder (mültazim, plural mültezim or mültazims), who then collected the state taxes and made payments in fixed installments, keeping a part of the tax revenue for his own use. The iltizām system included the farming of land taxes, the farming of urban taxes, the production of certain goods (such as wine, salt, or senna), and the provision of certain services. It began during the reign of Sultan Mehmed II (1444–46, 1451–81) and was officially abolished in 1856. Various forms of iltizām, however, continued until the end of the empire in the early 20th century, when the system was replaced by methods of taxation that were supervised by public officials.
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71bd00047318611c007fc8ccb51592ad | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Im-Not-There | I’m Not There | I’m Not There
… (2007), and Bob Dylan in I’m Not There (2007). In 2008 he reprised his role as Wayne and Batman in The Dark Knight. The film—which was released shortly after the accidental death of costar Heath Ledger, who played the Joker—set box-office records amid critical acclaim.
In the unconventional biopic I’m Not There (2007), she starred as one of several characters based on the musician Bob Dylan at different stages in his life. As the character Jude, a star making the dramatic shift from acoustic folk to electric rock, Blanchett was praised for capturing the…
His next film was I’m Not There (2007), an unorthodox biography of American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, in which various actors (including Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Richard Gere, and Heath Ledger) played characters representing Dylan at different stages of his life. Haynes later cowrote and directed the HBO
…Dylan, in the critically lauded I’m Not There (2007). In 2008 he reteamed with his Unfaithful (2002) costar Diane Lane in Nights in Rodanthe, a romantic drama based on a novel by Nicholas Sparks. Gere’s later films include Amelia (2009), a biopic about the American aviator Amelia Earhart (played
… to the ensemble cast of I’m Not There (2007).
…Terror) and Tarantino (Death Proof); I’m Not There (2007), an unconventional biopic of Bob Dylan; and The Great Debaters (2007), a drama—directed by and starring Denzel Washington—about an underdog debate team from an African American college that competed against Harvard for the 1935 national championship. The Weinstein Company later released…
…iconoclastic projects as Todd Haynes’s I’m Not There (2007), a fragmented portrait of Bob Dylan, and Charlie Kaufman’s inventive existential drama Synecdoche, New York (2008). She won accolades for her nearly solo turn in Kelly Reichardt’s Wendy and Lucy (2008), in which she evinced the solitary desperation of an impoverished…
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77cd96f2e5d0b3bd8b0879a3ffece987 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/imagination | Imagination | Imagination
Such paradoxes suggest the need for a more extensive theory of the mind than has been so far assumed. We have referred somewhat loosely to the sensory and intellectual components of human experience but have said little about the possible relations and dependencies that…
…writers was the role of imagination. Addison’s essays were seminal, but discussion of imagination remained largely confined to the associative theories of Locke and his followers until Hume gave to the imagination a fundamental role in the generation of commonsense beliefs. Kant attempted to describe the imagination as a distinctive…
…poets do who follow their imagination rather than their reason. Only later, after they have become rational, can human beings understand what they are and what they have made. Vico’s idea that early humans were nonrational and childlike prefigured Rousseau’s primitivism and his conception of human development (see below The…
…to a new stress on imagination. Samuel Taylor Coleridge saw the imagination as the supreme poetic quality, a quasi-divine creative force that made the poet a godlike being. Samuel Johnson had seen the components of poetry as “invention, imagination and judgement,” but Blake wrote: “One Power alone makes a Poet:…
…involving physical objects by mentally imagining certain events and outcomes, rather than by simple physical trial-and-error experimentation.
Prose that is nonfictional is generally supposed to cling to reality more closely than that which invents stories, or frames imaginary plots. Calling it “realistic,” however, would be a gross distortion. Since nonfictional prose does not stress inventiveness of themes and of characters independent…
…an importance in the reader’s imagination comparable to that of the characters and yet somehow separable from them. Wessex is a giant brooding presence in Thomas Hardy’s novels, whose human characters would probably not behave much differently if they were set in some other rural locality of England. The popularity…
…speculation on the nature of imagination, on poetry as expression—“the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings,” in Wordsworth’s famous phrase—and on the concept of the poem as organic form. The discussion between Wordsworth and Coleridge on the nature and function of metre illuminates the crucial transition from Neoclassical to modern theories.…
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59ae87c3a542ba4a5d0200e79d34e6ba | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Imagine-Entertainment | Imagine Entertainment | Imagine Entertainment
…Brian Grazer) the production company Imagine Entertainment. In addition to films, Imagine produced numerous television shows, including 24, Friday Night Lights, Arrested Development, and Genius; the latter, an anthology series, centred on the lives of significant historical figures.
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aa41c983a19157d745d1a139fc82e673 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/immacolata | Immacolata | Immacolata
The immacolata, which in the 17th century emphasized her Immaculate Conception, or perpetual freedom from original sin, shows her as a young girl descending from the heavens, supported by a crescent moon and crowned by stars. The Madonna of the rosary, which until the 16th century…
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0a005a292e98ece53cfe4988002c0aed | https://www.britannica.com/topic/immersion-Christian-baptism | Immersion | Immersion
…were led to insist upon immersion as the apostolic form of the rite.
…under whose leadership they accepted immersion of believers as the only scriptural form of baptism and entered the Redstone Baptist Association. Alexander Campbell rapidly gained influence as a reformer, winning fame as preacher, debater, editor (Christian Baptist), and champion of the new popular democracy. His colleague Walter Scott developed a…
…the entire body, even though immersion was probably the biblical and early Christian rite. The change almost certainly occurred during the spread of Christianity into Europe north of the Alps and the usual occurrence in early spring of the baptismal feasts, Easter and Pentecost. The Roman Catholic Church simply asserts…
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e21e5225f8a1cbbada8c1e3948091279 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/immigration | Immigration | Immigration
Immigration, process through which individuals become permanent residents or citizens of another country. Historically, the process of immigration has been of great social, economic, and cultural benefit to states. The immigration experience is long and varied and has in many cases resulted in the development of multicultural societies; many modern states are characterized by a wide variety of cultures and ethnicities that have derived from previous periods of immigration.
In the post-World War II period, immigration was largely the result of the refugee movement following that war and, during the 1950s and ’60s, the end of colonization across Asia and Africa. Immigration from these areas to former imperial centres, such as the United Kingdom and France, increased. In the United Kingdom, for example, the 1948 British Nationality Act gave citizens in the former colonial territories of the Commonwealth (a potential figure of 800 million) the right of British nationality.
Immigrants and guest workers played a vital role in the rebuilding of Europe’s infrastructure after World War II by working in heavy industry, in health services, and in transport. However, they suffered discrimination, which contributed in some countries to the isolation of ethnic groups and minority communities. Some states attempted to deal with the social exclusion of immigrants by limiting future immigration, whereas others approached it with a more-inclusive “melting pot” focus on the amalgamation of diverse cultures into one coherent understanding of citizenship. This approach has been integral to the notion of citizenship in the United States, where immigrants taking U.S. citizenship swear allegiance to their new place of residence. Critics of this approach highlight the assimilation of diverse cultures and the repression of difference in the name of the state. Immigration is therefore closely related to citizenship and the social and political rights to which citizens of a state are entitled.
States maintain control of their borders and therefore are able to monitor and determine the number of immigrants who are able to remain permanently. This can vary across states, and in some areas borders are more open than in others. In 1985, for example, European states signed an agreement in Schengen, Luxembourg, to end internal border checkpoints and controls, and subsequent European Union (EU) immigration and asylum law was agreed to by the European Council in Tampere, Finland, in 1999. EU law states that European Economic Area (EEA) nationals are given the right to live and work (right of residence) in other member states. In many states this entitles newly arrived immigrants to public services (housing and social services, for example). In the United States the mechanism for selecting legal immigrants is complex, but all legal immigration flows have at least three components: family (spouses, parents, or children of U.S. citizens), employment (many different categories, including unskilled workers and investors), and humanitarian (including refugees and asylum seekers).
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e92f91ca90249e16bf254fa3f1b90e8c | https://www.britannica.com/topic/imperative-mood | Imperative mood | Imperative mood
…three moods: the indicative, the imperative, and the subjunctive. The indicative is generally used for factual or neutral situations, as in English “John did his work” and Spanish “Juan hizo su trabajo.” The imperative conveys commands or requests—for example, “Do your work.” It is distinguished by the absence of an…
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6d05e4ae69742b9d1298f471dac77640 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Imperial-Rescript-on-Education | Imperial Rescript on Education | Imperial Rescript on Education
Together with these reforms, the Imperial Rescript on Education (Kyōiku Chokugo) of 1890 played a major role in providing a structure for national morality. By reemphasizing the traditional Confucian and Shintō values and redefining the courses in shūshin, it was to place morality and education on a foundation of imperial…
The Imperial Rescript on Education (Kyōiku Chokugo) of 1890 ensured that future generations would unquestioningly defer to imperial will and authority.
…elementary and secondary curriculum, the Imperial Rescript on Education made it clear that traditional Confucian and Shintō values were to serve as the basis of moral education. This emphasis was implemented by courses on “national moral education” (shūshin), which served as the core of the curriculum. In 1903 a system…
In 1890 the Imperial Rescript on Education (Kyōiku Chokugo) laid out the lines of Confucian and Shintō ideology, which constituted the moral content of later Japanese education. Thus, loyalty to the emperor, who was hedged about with Confucian teachings and Shintō reverence, became the centre of a citizen’s…
…conservative tone of the Japanese Imperial Rescript on Education (Oct. 30, 1890). Placed in every school throughout Japan until 1945, it started the trend toward political indoctrination of the nation’s young people.
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deee0f0611910ae49006cca9dfdffcfe | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Imperial-Rule-Assistance-Association | Imperial Rule Assistance Association | Imperial Rule Assistance Association
…their members joined the government-sponsored Imperial Rule Assistance Association (Taisei Yokusankai).
…the second Konoe cabinet, the Imperial Rule Assistance Association was established to merge the political parties into one central organization; yet, the institutional structure of the Meiji constitution was never altered, and the wartime governments never achieved full control over interservice competition. The Imperial Rule Assistance Association failed to mobilize…
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0e8fe76d6082fcd061a29cae1adbdb05 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Imperial-Russian-Army | Imperial Russian Army | Imperial Russian Army
…organization to a “European” professional army (as it developed in the course of the so-called military revolution of the 17th century) had been initiated during the reigns of Tsars Michael and Alexis. But it was Peter who gave it the full-fledged “modern” form it retained until the middle of the…
Imperial Russian Army during the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05) and a military attaché in Beijing (1907–11), Kornilov became a divisional commander during World War I. Captured by the Austrians at Przemysl (March 1915), he escaped in 1916 and was placed in command of an army corps.
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d8c901b3b933052db284e86f90e2e725 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Imperial-School-of-Ballet | Imperial School of Ballet | Imperial School of Ballet
…War I years at the Imperial School of Ballet at the Mariinsky Theatre. The theatre closed for some months in 1917, and, until the Imperial School reopened in 1918 as the Soviet State School of Ballet, he had to support himself with unskilled jobs or by playing piano in a…
…middle-class family and entered the Imperial Ballet School at the Mariinsky Theatre in 1889, where he distinguished himself for the breadth of his interests and studies. Fokine was talented not only as a dancer but also as a student of music and painting. He had a fresh and inquiring attitude…
…and principal teacher at the Imperial Ballet School in St. Petersburg, who made a fundamental contribution to the development of the Russian style of classical ballet.
…accepted for training at the Imperial School of Ballet at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg in 1891.
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0f18eb6944f44dda9377cd0cfe3acdb0 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Imperial-Treasures-of-Japan | Imperial Treasures of Japan | Imperial Treasures of Japan
…famous sword, one of the Imperial Treasures of Japan supposedly brought from heaven by the first Japanese emperor. The battle became legendary through accounts such as the Gempei seisui-ki (“Record of the Rise and Fall of the Minamoto and Taira”).
…that was one of the Imperial Treasures of Japan, the symbols of divine authority that had supposedly been brought to Japan when the first emperor descended from heaven.
…to form part of the Imperial Treasures of Japan. Susanoo married the girl he had rescued from the dragon, and together they produced many generations of gods. The most famous of their offspring was Ōkuninushi, the “Master of the Great Land” (Izumo).
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76fb19aca4ef635b110b6e6d9e1fd123 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/imperialism | Imperialism | Imperialism
Imperialism, state policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political and economic control of other areas. Because it always involves the use of power, whether military or economic or some subtler form, imperialism has often been considered morally reprehensible, and the term is frequently employed in international propaganda to denounce and discredit an opponent’s foreign policy.
Imperialism is the state policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political and economic control of other territories and peoples. Because it always involves the use of power, whether military or economic or some subtler form, imperialism has often been considered morally reprehensible. Examples from history include Greek imperialism under Alexander the Great and Italian imperialism under Benito Mussolini.
Today the term imperialism is commonly used in international propaganda to denounce and discredit an opponent’s foreign policy. International organizations, including the United Nations, attempt to maintain peace using measures such as collective security arrangements and aid to developing countries. However, critics say imperialism exists today; for example, many in the Middle East saw the U.S.-led Iraq War as a new brand of anti-Arab and anti-Islamic imperialism.
Following the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, European nations sought to extend their economic and political power overseas, especially in Africa, in a period dubbed “the New Imperialism.” This competition led European elites and the broad literate classes to believe that the old European balance of power was over and a new world order was dawning. Some scholars argue that this process intensified imperial rivalries and helped provoke World War I.
Imperialism in ancient times is clear in the history of China and in the history of western Asia and the Mediterranean—an unending succession of empires. The tyrannical empire of the Assyrians was replaced (6th–4th century bce) by that of the Persians, in strong contrast to the Assyrian in its liberal treatment of subjected peoples, assuring it long duration. It eventually gave way to the imperialism of Greece. When Greek imperialism reached an apex under Alexander the Great (356–323 bce), a union of the eastern Mediterranean with western Asia was achieved. But the cosmopolis, in which all citizens of the world would live harmoniously together in equality, remained a dream of Alexander. It was partially realized when the Romans built their empire from Britain to Egypt.
This idea of empire as a unifying force was never again realized after the fall of Rome. The nations arising from the ashes of the Roman Empire in Europe, and in Asia on the common basis of Islamic civilization (see Islamic world), pursued their individual imperialist policies. Imperialism became a divisive force among the peoples of the world.
Three periods in the modern era witnessed the creation of vast empires, primarily colonial. Between the 15th century and the middle of the 18th, England, France, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain built empires in the Americas, India, and the East Indies. For almost a century thereafter, relative calm in empire building reigned as the result of a strong reaction against imperialism. Then the decades between the middle of the 19th century and World War I (1914–18) were again characterized by intense imperialistic policies.
Russia, Italy, Germany, the United States, and Japan were added as newcomers among the imperialistic states, and indirect, especially financial, control became a preferred form of imperialism. For a decade after World War I the great expectations for a better world inspired by the League of Nations put the problem of imperialism once more in abeyance. Then Japan renewed its empire building with an attack in 1931 upon China. Under the leadership of Japan and the totalitarian states—Italy under the Fascist Party, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union—a new period of imperialism was inaugurated in the 1930s and ’40s.
In their modern form, arguments about the causes and value of imperialism can be classified into four main groups. The first group contains economic arguments and often turn around the question of whether or not imperialism pays. Those who argue that it does point to the human and material resources and the outlets for goods, investment capital, and surplus population provided by an empire. Their opponents—among them Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and J.A. Hobson—often assert that imperialism may benefit a small favoured group but never the nation as a whole. Marxist theoreticians interpret imperialism as a late stage of capitalism wherein the national capitalist economy has become monopolistic and is forced to conquer outlets for its overproduction and surplus capital in competition with other capitalist states. This was the view held, for instance, by Vladimir Lenin and N.I. Bukharin, for whom capitalism and imperialism were identical. The weakness in their view is that historical evidence does not support it and that it fails to explain precapitalist imperialism and communist imperialism.
A second group of arguments relates imperialism to the nature of human beings and human groups, such as the state. Such different personalities as Machiavelli, Sir Francis Bacon, and Ludwig Gumplowicz, reasoning on different grounds, nevertheless arrived at similar conclusions—which Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini also endorsed, though not for intellectual reasons. Imperialism for them is part of the natural struggle for survival. Those endowed with superior qualities are destined to rule all others.
The third group of arguments has to do with strategy and security. Nations are urged, proponents of this viewpoint say, to obtain bases, strategic materials, buffer states, “natural” frontiers, and control of communication lines for reasons of security or to prevent other states from obtaining them. Those who deny the value of imperialism for these purposes point out that security is not thereby achieved. Expansion of a state’s control over territories and peoples beyond its borders is likely to lead to friction, hence insecurity, because the safety zones and spheres of influence of competing nations are bound to overlap sooner or later. Related to the security argument is the argument that nations are inevitably imperialistic in their natural search for power and prestige.
The fourth group of arguments is based on moral grounds, sometimes with strong missionary implications. Imperialism is excused as the means of liberating peoples from tyrannical rule or of bringing them the blessings of a superior way of life. Imperialism results from a complex of causes in which in varying degrees economic pressures, human aggressiveness and greed, the search for security, the drive for power and prestige, nationalist emotions, humanitarianism, and many other factors are effective. This mixture of motivations makes it difficult to eliminate imperialism but also easy for states considering themselves potential victims to suspect it in policies not intended to be imperialistic. Some states of the developing world have accused the former colonial powers and other nations of neocolonialism. Their fear is that the granting of aid or the supply of skilled personnel for economic and technical development might be an imperialist guise.
Under international organizations, attempts have been made to satisfy by peaceful means the legitimate aspirations of nations and to contain their illegitimate ones. Measures for these purposes have included collective security arrangements, the mandate and the trusteeship system for dependent areas, the stimulation of cultural relations between nations, aid to developing countries, and the improvement of health and welfare everywhere.See alsocolonialism.
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d6ec7f374e57c49ce86d3295b8b4c556 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/implied-warranty | Implied warranty | Implied warranty
As stated earlier, implied warranties are not expressly represented in the written or oral sales agreement but are created and imposed through application of law, usually the UCC. The two primary implied warranties that accompany the sale or lease of goods are that…
…must be considered: express and implied. Express warranties are promises written into the contract. There are also three implied warranties, which do not appear in written form but bind the parties nevertheless.
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d6c090f49f50963246a2772f4b335732 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/imposition-of-hands | Imposition of hands | Imposition of hands
Imposition of hands, also called Laying On Of Hands, ritual act in which a priest or other religious functionary places one or both hands palms down on the top of another person’s head, usually while saying a prayer or blessing. The imposition of hands was first practiced in Judaism and was adopted by Christianity. In the Hebrew Bible it is associated with three interrelated ideas: consecration (i.e., setting apart for the service of God), transmission of a divine gift, and identification (the means whereby an offerer was linked with his sacrifice).
In the New Testament the same ideas are present; all of these ideas are connected with ordination and baptism, in both of which the imposition of hands is a standard part of the ritual. Ordination involves both setting apart and the conveyance of a gift, and the theme of identification is implicit in that the one ordained shares in the authority and is the representative of the ordainer. The imposition of hands connected with baptism is a means whereby the convert is identified and so brought into the community; it is further a setting apart for the service of God and is, on occasion, connected with the gift of the Holy Spirit. The New Testament further indicates that the imposition of hands conveyed a blessing and was a means of healing.
The early church continued these uses and added two more: the imposition of hands for the blessing of catechumens (i.e., those preparing for baptism) and for the reconciliation of penitents and heretics. The church has preserved the use of this ritual act, primarily in the rites of ordination and confirmation.
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029367e3dea8e084ec9b4a94a5c4aea3 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/imprinting-learning-behaviour | Imprinting | Imprinting
Imprinting, in psychobiology, a form of learning in which a very young animal fixes its attention on the first object with which it has visual, auditory, or tactile experience and thereafter follows that object. In nature the object is almost invariably a parent; in experiments, other animals and inanimate objects have been used. Imprinting has been intensively studied only in birds, especially chickens, ducks, and geese, but a comparable form of learning apparently occurs in the young of many mammals and some fishes and insects.
In mallard ducklings and domestic chicks, imprinting can be accomplished in a few hours, but receptivity to imprinting stimuli vanishes at the age of about 30 hours.
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36f192e1b7565537ffe46b6be5e5538a | https://www.britannica.com/topic/In-Cold-Blood-film-by-Brooks | In Cold Blood | In Cold Blood
In Cold Blood, American dramatic film, released in 1967, that recounts the 1959 real-life murder of an entire family at the hands of two petty criminals. The film was based on the best seller of the same name by Truman Capote.
Perry Edward Smith (played by Robert Blake) and Dick Hickock (Scott Wilson), who had met in prison, break into a Kansas farmhouse that they have been led to believe contains a safe with $10,000 inside. After killing the parents and children, the two ex-cons discover that there is no safe and flee to Mexico, where Perry dreams of prospecting for gold. When this plan fails to come to fruition, they return to the United States, supporting themselves by cashing bad checks. Meanwhile, the police, led by Kansas Bureau of Investigation agent Alvin Dewey (John Forsythe), attempt to track down the killers and finally apprehend them in Las Vegas. They are quickly put on trial and, after being convicted, are sentenced to be executed. Five years later, they are hanged.
To ensure accuracy, director Richard Brooks shot on location in Kansas, even using the house in Holcomb in which the crime occurred. The striking black-and-white cinematography, by then a rarity among American studio pictures, lends the film an air of gravity, especially in its depiction of the Clutter family’s step-by-step march to death. That one of the killers is played by Robert Blake added an unintended eeriness to the production for an early 21st-century audience, given that in 2002 Blake was charged with (though later acquitted of) the murder of his wife.
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46b46b8deae93a80c5c24650a94280cd | https://www.britannica.com/topic/In-His-Steps | In His Steps | In His Steps
The most successful series, In His Steps, concerned the inhabitants of a town who pledged themselves to live for a year as Jesus would live. First published serially in 1896 and in book form in 1897, In His Steps was for 60 years the largest-selling book in the United…
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5d3591c8ce8c7f236e0b2418adef187c | https://www.britannica.com/topic/In-Mad-Love-and-War | In Mad Love and War | In Mad Love and War
…with photographs by Stephen Strom; In Mad Love and War (1990), the winner of a 1991 American Book Award; Fishing (1992); A Map to the Next World: Poetry and Tales (2000); and How We Became Human: New and Selected Poems (2002). In Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings (2015), Harjo chronicled…
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26d51250ce22e136a37990352dc50056 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/In-Our-Time | In Our Time | In Our Time
Adams first appears in In Our Time (1925), a collection of 15 stories, including coming-of-age experiences in the woods of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The character also appears, at various stages of his life, in the short-story collection Men Without Women (1927). Hemingway’s Adventures of a Young Man…
…a collection of stories called In Our Time, was published in New York City; it was originally released in Paris in 1924.
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30dab96a80cd7d2e14d25dddc131d4d1 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/In-re-Territo | In re Territo | In re Territo
In re Territo, (Latin: “In the matter of Territo”) legal case in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled on June 8, 1946, that American citizens captured as prisoners of war by U.S. armed forces may be detained without formal criminal charges. In the early 21st century the case was cited by the U.S. government to justify its claimed authority to hold American citizens declared to be “enemy combatants” in indefinite military custody without charge.
Gaetano Territo, an American-born private in the Italian army during World War II, was captured and taken prisoner by the U.S. Army in 1943. He was subsequently transferred from a prison facility in Italy to a prisoner-of-war camp in California. At some point after his arrival in the United States, Territo filed a petition in which he claimed that because he had been born in the United States, his imprisonment on American soil without having been formally charged was contrary to law. He sought a writ of habeas corpus, charging that he was being held illegally as a prisoner of war.
After a U.S. district court rejected Territo’s argument, he appealed to the Ninth Circuit, which upheld the lower court’s ruling, holding that “all persons who are active in opposing an army in war may be captured and except for spies and other non-uniformed plotters and actors for the enemy are prisoners of war.” Territo’s classification as a prisoner of war therefore took precedence over his American citizenship, and he could not seek legal redress in the manner of an American citizen. Territo was refused release and later was deported.
In re Territo gained legal prominence following the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States by terrorists associated with al-Qaeda. Soon after the attacks, the George W. Bush administration declared its authority to place American citizens as well as foreign nationals in indefinite military custody without charge by declaring them to be enemy combatants in the “war on terrorism.” The Department of Justice subsequently defended the lengthy military confinement of Jose Padilla, an American citizen designated an enemy combatant in 2002, on the basis of In re Territo and Ex Parte Quirin (1942), in which the Supreme Court had upheld the trial by military tribunal of eight German saboteurs, one of whom was an American citizen. (Padilla was eventually transferred to civilian custody and convicted on charges of terrorism-related conspiracy.) Some critics of the administration’s position charged that the precedents were not apposite because, unlike Padilla, the American citizens in those cases were members of the armed forces of a country with which the United States was in a declared state of war.
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63bc0bc09692afb662202c57d03554f9 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/In-the-Boom-Boom-Room | In the Boom Boom Room | In the Boom Boom Room
Rabe’s subsequent plays included In the Boom Boom Room (1975), about the degradation of a go-go dancer in Philadelphia; Hurlyburly (1985; film 1998) and Those the River Keeps (1991), two related dramas about disillusionment in Hollywood; A Question of Mercy (1998); The Dog Problem (2002); The Black Monk
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da276ade4388fbf4dc866163e768e436 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/In-the-First-Circle | In the First Circle | In the First Circle
In the First Circle, novel by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, titled in RussianV kruge pervom. The original manuscript, reflecting Solzhenitsyn’s own imprisonment, was 96 chapters long when completed in 1958, but, hoping to avoid censorship, the author deleted 9 chapters. Though the modified version was accepted for publication by the Soviet literary journal Novy mir, it was not published until 1968, and then only in the West, in English, as The First Circle. A decade later the complete novel, with the deleted chapters restored, was published in Russian in the United States, but it was not published in the author’s homeland until 1990. Only in 2009 was it published in English, as In the First Circle.
Referring to the schema of Dante’s Inferno, the title In the First Circle reflects the relatively privileged status of the inmates, including the protagonist Gleb Nerzhin, of a special Soviet prison. This prison is a research laboratory in which prisoners are required to invent despicable gadgets (such as a device that identifies even disguised voices over the telephone) in the service of their captors, Joseph Stalin’s secret police. Solzhenitsyn portrayed the men in the prison camp as distinctive individuals and the aged Stalin as paranoid and vicious. Heroism is criminal in the secret police’s perverse hierarchy of values, and cruelty and betrayal are rewarded.
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8bed4a307a63f75b7a59f86847b2dc86 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/In-the-Good-Old-Summertime | In the Good Old Summertime | In the Good Old Summertime
Leonard next directed Garland in In the Good Old Summertime (1949), an appealing musical remake of Ernst Lubitsch’s The Shop Around the Corner (1940).
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41911e9f73966710ab1af163a532e45b | https://www.britannica.com/topic/In-the-Heat-of-the-Night | In the Heat of the Night | In the Heat of the Night
In the Heat of the Night (1967) starred Sidney Poitier as a detective from Philadelphia who becomes involved in solving a murder in a small Mississippi town. The film, which cast a gimlet eye on racial prejudices in the South, won five Academy Awards, including…
Next was In the Heat of the Night (1967), a crime drama that focused on the uneasy partnership that develops between a bigoted white Southern police chief (played by Rod Steiger) and Virgil Tibbs, an intellectual Black Philadelphia detective (Poitier). The film received the Oscar for best…
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abd9dbbf7c06de4d788dc637b18a1e80 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/In-the-Middle-Earth | In the Middle Earth | In the Middle Earth
…also wrote a one-act play, In the Middle Earth (1977); a volume of criticism, Women in Romanticism (1989); a semiautobiographical novel set in Hyderabad, India, Nampally Road (1991); and a memoir, Fault Lines (1993).
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cccc10e614d0216ccf0cae68284d0c83 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/In-the-Name-of-the-Father | In the Name of the Father | In the Name of the Father
…adaptation of Edith Wharton’s novel; In the Name of the Father (1993), which earned him an Academy Award nomination; and The Crucible (1996), based on Arthur Miller’s play. After appearing in The Boxer (1997), Day-Lewis took a break from acting and worked for a time as a cobbler’s apprentice in…
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8f5d6c1dbe43f4769f9218415ff6a36f | https://www.britannica.com/topic/In-the-Spirit-of-Crazy-Horse | In the Spirit of Crazy Horse | In the Spirit of Crazy Horse
His book In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (1983), about the conflict between federal agents and the American Indian Movement at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1973, was the subject of a prolonged libel suit that blocked all but an initial printing and was not settled until…
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ece28ad088a196a67a69d7a1bd49165b | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Inauguration-of-the-Pleasure-Dome | Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome | Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome
Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954) was a kaleidoscopic montage of performers, including Nin, in the guise of various deities. Those themes, reflective of Anger’s adherence to the mystical teachings of British occultist Aleister Crowley, would pervade much of his later work. Anger defined himself…
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5399a254a3ae0bcc2f417525193ebe49 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/incarnation-religion | Incarnation | Incarnation
The core of human personality has often been thought to be human moral existence, and, accordingly, theists have often taken this fact to be the main clue to the way they are to think of divine perfection and to the recognition of a peculiar…
…king was regarded as the incarnation of the sun god or of the moon god. In addition to sky or sun deities, the sacred king also has been identified with other gods: the town god (Mesopotamia), the gods of the country, the god of the storm, and the weather god.…
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510d38b79ced03f36f24f5226a924bf3 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/incitement | Incitement | Incitement
…linked with the crime of incitement. An inciter is generally one who is present at the scene of the offense and who encourages the principal offender to commit an act that he is already inclined to commit on his own. A solicitor need not be present at the scene but…
Thus, the offense of incitement or solicitation consists of urging or requesting another to commit a crime. Certain specified types of solicitation may be criminal, such as solicitation of a bribe, solicitation for immoral purposes, or incitement of members of the armed forces to mutiny. The Model Penal Code…
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96393309f8d84065fa99745560caf50b | https://www.britannica.com/topic/inclusive-monotheism | Inclusive monotheism | Inclusive monotheism
Inclusive monotheism accepts the existence of a great number of gods but holds that all gods are essentially one and the same, so that it makes little or no difference under which name or according to which rite a god or goddess is…
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ee354bfc67124fd1b4651b3f268711fc | https://www.britannica.com/topic/income | Income | Income
Income is a net total of the flow of payments received in a given time period. Some countries collect statistics on wealth from legally required evaluations of the estates of deceased persons, which may or may not be indicative of what is possessed by the…
…time shows how the net income for that period was derived. For example, the first line in Table 2 shows the company’s net sales revenues for the period: the assets obtained from customers in exchange for the goods and services that constitute the company’s stock-in-trade. The second line summarizes the…
…less than the price, sales revenues will increase more than costs if output is increased by one unit (or even a few more); and profits will rise. Contrariwise, if the marginal cost is greater than the price, profits will be increased by cutting back output by at least one unit.…
…relates aggregate consumption to national income, is not built up from individual consumer behaviour; it is simply an empirical generalization. The focus is on income and expenditure flows rather than the operation of markets. Purchasing power flows through the system—from business investment to consumption—but it flows out of the system…
A proper understanding of income and expenditure theory requires some acquaintance with the concepts used in national income accounting. These accounts provide quantitative data on national income and national product. Reliable information on these was, for the most part, not available to economists working on problems of economic instability…
income derived from human labour. Technically, wages and salaries cover all compensation made to employees for either physical or mental work, but they do not represent the income of the self-employed. Labour costs are not identical to wage and salary costs, because total labour costs…
…computed on the basis of income received. It is usually classified as a direct tax because the burden is presumably on the individuals who pay it. Corporate income tax is imposed on net profits, computed as the excess of receipts over allowable costs.
…economics, the proportion of total income or of an increase in income that consumers tend to spend on goods and services rather than to save. The ratio of total consumption to total income is known as the average propensity to consume; an increase in consumption caused by an addition to…
…when there are changes in income. Economist John Maynard Keynes, who was the first to stress the importance of the MPC in The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936), believed that up to 90 percent of any increase in current income would translate into an immediate increase in…
…economics, the proportion of total income or of an increase in income that consumers save rather than spend on goods and services. The average propensity to save equals the ratio of total saving to total income; the marginal propensity to save equals the ratio of a change in saving to…
income derived from the ownership of land and other free gifts of nature. The neoclassical economist Alfred Marshall, and others after him, chose this definition for technical reasons, even though it is somewhat more restrictive than the meaning given the term in popular usage. Apart…
If one defines income as the sum of the change in the individual’s consumption and the change in his net worth, then capital gains should logically be taxed as ordinary income. If the definition of income operative in the British tax system is accepted, capital gains will not…
…orderliness in the distribution of income itself among workers, whose recompense was their wages; landlords, whose income was their rents; and manufacturers, whose reward was their profits.
…the relation between capital and income. Income, like capital, is a concept that is capable of many definitions; a useful approach to the concept of income is to regard it as the gross addition to capital in a given period. For any economic unit, whether a firm or an individual,…
…not the same as net income (revenues minus expenses). For one thing, not all revenues are collected in cash. Revenue is usually recorded when a customer receives merchandise and either pays for it or promises to pay the company in the future (in which case the revenue is recorded in…
…an economic point of view, income is defined as the change in the company’s wealth during a period of time, from all sources other than the injection or withdrawal of investment funds. This general definition of income represents the amount the company could consume during the period and still have…
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c8ae018aacc47f51db6529d1422ca421 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/income-statement | Income statement | Income statement
Income statement, In accounting, the activity-oriented financial statement issued by businesses. Covering a specified time, such as three months or one year, the income statement is a summary of revenues and expenses. It also lists gains and losses from other transactions, such as the sale of assets or the repayment of debt. Standard accounting rules govern the procedures for recording each item.
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c3eec08264e3f24728d8f09dc9fb8f37 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/income-tax/Corporate-income-tax | Corporate income tax | Corporate income tax
The corporate income tax is a levy that is imposed on the net profits of corporations, computed as the excess of receipts over allowable costs.
The separate taxation of the incomes of corporations and their shareholders follows the legal principle that corporations and shareholders are distinct entities. Some scholars argue that it also accords with economic reality, particularly for large corporations with many shareholders who do not participate actively in controlling the enterprise. They consider a corporation income tax justified as a charge for the privilege of doing business in the corporate form, as a means of covering the costs of public services that especially benefit business, and as a way of capturing part of the profits of large enterprises.
Other scholars maintain that corporations act on behalf of shareholders and should be taxed like a large partnership or, alternatively, only to the extent that their profits are not reached by the individual income tax. Most economists concede that a tax may have to be assessed on corporations to prevent shareholders from escaping current taxation on undistributed profits and, as their shares appreciate in value, converting this income into capital gains, which in many countries either are taxed at lower rates than ordinary income or are free of income tax. (See capital gains tax.) A corporation income tax also enables a country, province, or state to tax the profits earned within its borders by corporations whose shareholders reside elsewhere.
Corporate income taxes are mainly flat-rate levies, rather than extensively graduated taxes (which means that rates rise according to income—as in the typical individual income tax). An acceptable schedule of progressive rates could hardly be devised for corporations, because they differ greatly in scale of operations and numbers of shareholders. (See progressive tax.) Moreover, the shareholders themselves may have either high incomes or (as is the case with corporate pension funds) low incomes.
A number of industrialized countries have corporate income tax rates on the order of 50 percent, sometimes with reduced rates for small corporations. Where the latter feature exists, safeguards may be instituted to prevent its abuse by enterprises that split into nominally independent corporations without giving up unified control. More significant are corporate mergers or acquisitions motivated by the possibility of saving taxes through offsetting the losses of some against the profits of others.
Corporate taxes may be graduated according to the rate of return on invested capital rather than the absolute size of profits. This is accomplished by an excess-profits tax on profits above a certain “normal” rate of return, sometimes further graduated according to the degree to which actual profits exceed the exempt level. The excess-profits tax has been used widely during wars and other national emergencies and to a much lesser extent under other conditions. There are serious difficulties involved in determining accurately the value of invested capital and in selecting an appropriate normal rate of return.
Sharp differences of opinion exist concerning the economic effects of the corporate income tax, partly because it is difficult to determine who actually bears it. The traditional conclusion of economic theory is that the tax is not reflected in prices in the short run and hence must be paid out of profits. If firms try to maximize their profits, the tax will give them no reason to change their prices. The price and output that yield maximum profits before tax will yield maximum profits after tax. Although the tax must be covered by sales receipts, it is not a cost of production in the same sense as, for example, wages but a share of profits that can be computed only after gross receipts and production costs are known. This reasoning applies equally to competitive and to less-competitive or wholly monopolized industries. Certain qualifications have always been made, but they are fairly minor in nature. More important, the theory relates only to the determination of prices and output given the existing stock of capital. (The technical definition of short run in economics is a period of time over which the capital stock does not change.) The theory does not predict what the long-run effects of the tax will be, although it indicates that they will mirror those of a tax on profit recipients rather than on consumers.
This view of the incidence of the corporate income tax has been increasingly challenged. Its opponents argue that in many industries prices are decisively influenced by the actions of a few leading firms, which have as their objective not maximum profits in the short run but a target rate of return over a period of years. When the rate of corporate income tax is increased, they say, the leading firms will raise their selling prices in order to maintain the target return, and other firms will follow. According to this hypothesis, prices are not competitively determined but are generally at levels lower than those that would yield maximum profits in the short run. Another qualification of the traditional view is that labour unions may share the burden of the tax through lower wage settlements.
The debate among economists and businessmen over the question has not been resolved by empirical research. Some studies in the United States, Canada, and Germany indicate that the corporate income tax is largely shifted to consumers through short-run price rises, while other studies support the opposite conclusion.
If the tax is not shifted to consumers through price increases, it will tend to reduce the return on corporate-equity capital. (Because interest payments are nearly always deductible in determining taxable profits, the return on borrowed capital is not subject to the corporation tax.) The returns on capital in unincorporated enterprises and on bonds and mortgages will tend to fall over time as investors try to avoid the corporate tax by shifting to untaxed areas. In this way the corporation income tax may actually burden all capital, rather than only that invested in the corporate sector. A general reduction in rates of return may curtail investment by cutting the reward for success and by reducing the quantity of resources available in the form of retained corporate profits and personal savings. This will tend to reduce the rate of growth of national product. Ultimately, however, the effect may not be dramatic. Capital investment is only one factor influencing growth rates, and some analyses indicate that it is less important than other phenomena, such as technological innovation and education, that influence the growth rate.
If the corporate income tax reduces either the return on corporate-equity capital or the returns on all capital, it will be broadly progressive in the aggregate; that is, it will reduce disposable income proportionately more for high-income persons than for low-income persons. This is because the fraction of total income represented by returns from ownership of corporate stock and other capital assets rises with income. This effect holds, however, only in the aggregate, because some low-income people, including many retirees, depend heavily on investment income and on the capital that has accumulated in pension funds.
On the other hand, when the corporate income tax is passed along to consumers through higher prices, it will—like a sales tax—act as a regressive tax, reducing disposable income proportionately more for people with low incomes than for those with high incomes. A corporation tax that has been shifted to consumers will not be especially harmful to investment, but it may have an adverse effect on resource allocation and a company’s competitive position in foreign markets.
Moreover, the effects of taxes imposed by a subnational government will differ from the effects of taxes imposed by a national government. A state tax, for example, is more likely to be borne by consumers residing in the state, by employees who work in the state, or by those who own land in the state.
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0993213c675a33d10c4509c7b9f725d3 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Incredible-Hulk | Incredible Hulk | Incredible Hulk
Incredible Hulk, American comic strip character created for Marvel Comics by writer Stan Lee and artist Jack Kirby. The towering, muscle-bound antihero debuted in the bimonthly series The Incredible Hulk in May 1962.
The Hulk was a hybrid of two popular comic-book genres—monsters and superheroes. In The Incredible Hulk no. 1, Lee and Kirby introduced the emotionally repressed nuclear scientist Robert Bruce Banner, inventor of the gamma bomb. When teenager Rick Jones sneaks onto the bomb’s test site, Banner races into harm’s way to push him into a protective trench, only to absorb a vast quantity of gamma rays when the device detonates. The irradiated Banner consequently begins making nightly transformations into an enormous gray-skinned monster with virtually limitless strength and destructive capability; it embodies the darkest, angriest, and most antisocial aspects of Banner’s personality. Along with Jones, who was initially the only other person aware of Banner’s dual nature, the book featured a supporting cast that included U.S. Air Force general Thaddeus E. (“Thunderbolt”) Ross, one of the Hulk’s most persistent antagonists, and Betty Ross, Thunderbolt’s daughter and a recurring romantic interest for Banner.
The Hulk’s first comic book series lasted only six issues before being canceled, but audiences were sufficiently intrigued with the title character to justify continued guest appearances elsewhere in the Marvel universe. In addition to brushes with the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man, the Hulk became a charter member of the Avengers, although he left that team after just one issue. The Hulk garnered a regular feature in Tales to Astonish, beginning in issue no. 60 (October 1964). After sharing the title, first with Giant-Man and later with the Sub-Mariner, the Hulk eventually took over the magazine completely, and with issue no. 102 (April 1968) it was renamed The Incredible Hulk.
The characterization and appearance of the Hulk underwent numerous changes after the character’s inception, and these transformations began almost immediately. In his debut appearance the creature had gray skin, but Marvel’s printer was unable produce the hue consistently, and Lee and Kirby made him green in the second issue. The mechanics of Banner’s metamorphosis into the Hulk—during which Banner initially retains his intellect, though his personality becomes warped and evil—also changed fairly early in the character’s history. By issue no. 4 of the first series (November 1962), Jones is helping Banner to trigger his transformations by means of a focused gamma ray beam. In late 1960s Tales to Astonish stories, Banner begins changing into the Hulk whenever he is roused to extreme anger rather than because of the arrival of nightfall. In the 1970s the Hulk’s secret identity became common knowledge to his foes, and he was increasingly portrayed as a misunderstood childlike creature. Although often given to temper tantrums set off by relatively minor provocations, the Hulk can also be peaceful and gentle when left alone, a state enjoyed only rarely. This portrayal is in sharp contrast to the Hulk’s first appearances, in which he appears to be evil and remorseless in his desire to attack humanity.
One of the most poignant chapters in the life of Marvel’s misunderstood man-monster came from fantasist Harlan Ellison and veteran comics writer Roy Thomas. In The Incredible Hulk no. 140 (June 1971), the Hulk enters a subatomic world inhabited by green-skinned humanoids who are ruled by the benevolent Princess Jarella. Here the Hulk finds not only the acceptance he craves but also the love of Jarella. He manages to retain the intellect and emotions of Banner while using the Hulk’s prodigious strength to protect Jarella and her people, although the Hulk/Banner ultimately ends up mourning Jarella’s death. The story line inspired later writers—such as John Byrne in the 1980s and Peter David in the 1990s—to alter the balance between Banner’s and the Hulk’s personalities, often to tremendous dramatic effect.
One of the highlights of Byrne’s stint on the series involved the separation of Banner and the Hulk into independent entities, thereby revisiting the Jekyll-and-Hyde concept that had initially inspired Lee and Kirby. Unshackled from Banner’s emotional restraint, the Hulk becomes more dangerous than ever before. Banner finally marries Betty Ross, but his bliss is short-lived. Byrne’s successor, writer Allen Milgrom, quickly placed both the man and the monster back into a single body.
David’s lengthy writing tenure, which began in The Incredible Hulk no. 328 (February 1987) and ended with issue no. 467 (August 1998), is widely regarded as the definitive treatment of the character. David explored three distinct personalities: Banner, who despite his emotional scars is capable of experiencing a loving relationship with Betty; an intelligent, scheming gray Hulk, who represses all of his “softer” emotions; and the raging child represented by the traditional green-skinned Hulk. David’s run on The Incredible Hulk is also memorable for its clever, incisive dialogue, its visually stunning exploration of Banner’s psyche, and the death—albeit temporary—of Betty Ross.
Although his long-running series concluded with issue no. 474 (March 1999), the Hulk returned to prominence a month later with a new monthly title, simply called Hulk. As the story unfolds, Banner must contend with a new incarnation of the Hulk that represents his intense guilt over Betty’s death. After sales slumped in the early 21st century, writer Greg Pak revitalized the franchise with the “Planet Hulk” (2006) and “World War Hulk” (2007) story lines. Cast into space by the Illuminati, a council of superheroes that includes Mr. Fantastic, Iron Man, and others, the Hulk crashes on the planet Sakaar, where he leads a revolt, becomes Sakaar’s emperor, and marries a woman named Caiera. Caiera becomes pregnant, but the spaceship that brought the Hulk to Sakaar explodes, killing Caiera and millions of others. Overcome with rage, the Hulk returns to Earth and attacks Manhattan, seeking revenge on the Illuminati, whom he blames for the disaster. The Hulk is finally defeated and imprisoned in his Bruce Banner form. Thanks to his alien biology, the Hulk’s unborn son Skaar survives Caiera’s death and rapidly grows to adulthood, becoming a regular supporting character. The Hulk’s perennial nemesis, General Thunderbolt Ross, makes a deal with a cadre of supervillains to become the gamma-powered Red Hulk, and his daughter Betty is resurrected and subjected to a similar process, becoming the Red She-Hulk. Although the proliferation of Hulks was initially a source of conflict within Marvel’s superheroic community, over time this new generation of titans found acceptance with such teams as the Avengers, the Thunderbolts, and the Defenders.
As one of Marvel’s most-recognizable characters, the Hulk proved to be a lucrative property in a variety of media. He was featured in several animated television series from the 1960s onward, but perhaps the definitive on-screen depiction of the character was the live-action drama The Incredible Hulk (1978–82). On that show, the character was played by two men, bodybuilder Lou Ferrigno as the Hulk and actor Bill Bixby as Banner. Oscar-winning director Ang Lee created the character’s first feature film, Hulk, in 2003. Another version, The Incredible Hulk, directed by Louis Letterier, appeared in 2008. The character was integrated into Marvel’s larger cinematic universe with Mark Ruffalo’s scene-stealing turn as the jade giant in The Avengers (2012). Ruffalo returned as the Hulk in Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015), Thor: Ragnarok (2017), Avengers: Infinity War (2018), and Avengers: Endgame (2019).
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2fcb89d734bf6371609536d65eb0b241 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/indefinite-integral | Indefinite integral | Indefinite integral
This is called the (indefinite) integral of the function y = x2, and it is written as ∫x2dx. The initial symbol ∫ is an elongated S, which stands for sum, and dx indicates an infinitely small increment of the variable, or axis, over which the function is being summed.…
An indefinite integral, sometimes called an antiderivative, of a function f(x), denoted by
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4f83d086dfade41909a5c0280de11356 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/indentation | Indentation | Indentation
…left blank between words; the indentation of the first line of a new paragraph; and the uppercase, or capital, letter written at the beginning of a sentence and at the beginning of a proper name or a title. The marks of punctuation, also known as points or stops, and the…
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2973d04a0af7d6aba3a9bb7cee32616d | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Independent-Republicans | Independent Republicans | Independent Republicans
…of a business party, the Independent Republicans (Républicains Indépendants). Giscard won over Chaban-Delmas in the first round and narrowly defeated Mitterrand in the runoff.
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b4b897d078f79070e663f7acb86cc468 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Independent-Social-Democratic-Party-of-Germany | Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany | Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany
…of the vote (while the Independent Social Democrats received another 7.6 percent), but the party’s failure to win favourable terms from the Allies at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 (terms embodied in the Treaty of Versailles) and the country’s severe economic problems led to a drop in support. Nevertheless,…
On the left, the Independent Socialists had 22 seats.
…pacifist principles, he joined the Independent Social Democratic Party (USPD) of which he later became a leader. Eisner was arrested in 1918 as a strike leader but was shortly released and resumed his leadership of the USPD. In November 1918 he successfully organized a revolution that overthrew the monarchy, proclaimed…
…the party to become the Independent Social Democratic Party of Germany (USPD), strenuously rejecting war appropriations and Germany’s war policy. Another group split from the SPD to form the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). The leftists who had withdrawn from the SPD sought a social revolution, while Ebert and his…
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91c0db1d274883cc9f5e276d48250f74 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Independent-Television | ITV | ITV
ITV, in full Independent Television, in the United Kingdom, television network consisting of a consortium of private companies in competition with the British Broadcasting Corporation. It is regulated by the Office of Communications. The ITV network was authorized by an act of Parliament in 1954, when the BBC’s monopoly over radio and television broadcasting was modified to permit a single channel to operate by selling airtime to advertisers.
The innovation came into existence amid fierce political controversy. ITV differed from the American commercial-television model in that there was only one channel for the independent facility, and its broadcasts were subject to much greater regulation of advertising and involved a greater range of variety and program content.
There were four original contractors who were to share ITV’s single network: Rediffusion, Granada, ATV, and ABC. All were based on established cinema and show-business interests, and they quickly set about providing the popular peak-time viewing: variety shows, big-money quizzes, pop-music programs, and open-ended drama serials, or “soap operas.” ATV’s Sunday Night at the London Palladium remained a staple of the weekend viewing diet for 13 years; Granada’s Coronation Street, a twice-weekly saga of working-class life in Northern England, achieved great popularity. ATV in particular, under the dynamic leadership of Lew Grade (later Lord Grade), embarked on a series of fast-moving adventure programs, beginning with The Saint and Danger Man. Other popular ITV series included the detective shows Inspector Morse (1987–2000) and Agatha Christie’s Poirot (1989–2013), the competition Britain’s Got Talent (2007– ), and the period drama Downton Abbey (2010–15).
The immediate popularity of ITV had a devastating effect on the BBC, and ITV revenues soared from an initial £2,000,000 to more than £60,000,000. The BBC reacted by adding popular programming in prime viewing hours, and ITV programmers greatly enhanced their reputation by developing superiority in coverage of current affairs and in some documentary areas.
By 1973 ITV had 15 regional broadcasting licenses, each operated by a different company. The Broadcasting Act of 1990, for the first time, allowed mergers between owners of broadcasting licenses, and by 2016 a single company, ITV plc, owned 13 of the licenses. The number of channels began expanding in 1998 with the launch of ITV2. More channels followed in 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2014. ITV also introduced its first subscription channel in 2014.
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9c008f134ff954617566af75adf9d7a4 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/index-information-retrieval | Index | Index
…bibliographer and library administrator whose indexing of periodicals became authoritative.
Undoubtedly the major adjunct of the modern encyclopaedia is its index. As early as 1614 the bishop of Petina, Antonio Zara, included a type of index in his Anatomia ingeniorum et scientiarum (“Anatomy of Talents and Sciences”). A Greek professor at Basel, Johann Jacob…
…numbered with consecutive integer “indexes” and an element’s value is accessed by its unique index. An array can be used, for example, to store a list of names, and efficient methods are needed to efficiently search for and retrieve a particular name from the array. For example, sorting the…
The 24 volumes and index volume of the ninth edition appeared one by one between 1875 and 1889. At the end of the index volume was a list of contributors, together with the abbreviations used for their names as signatures to their articles. In addition, at the beginning of…
…form of reviews, abstracts, and indexes. Over the past 100 years there has evolved a system of disciplinary, national, and international abstracting and indexing services that acts as a gateway to several attributes of primary literature: authors, subjects, publishers, dates (and languages) of publication, and citations. The professional activity associated…
A technique called indexing provides a refinement over library subject headings. It consists of extracting from the item or assigning to it subject and other “descriptors”—words or phrases denoting significant concepts (topics, names) that occur in or characterize the content of the record. Indexing frequently accompanies abstracting, a…
…particular care in labeling and indexing as well as equipment and programming to permit retrieval.
Book 6 is a student’s guide to several texts, mostly from the time of Euclid, on mathematical astronomy. Book 8 is about applications of geometry in mechanics; the topics include geometric constructions made under restrictive conditions, for example, using a “rusty” compass stuck at a fixed opening.
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9759f4081c81ca18552389fe2a5ec250 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/India-Bill | India Bill | India Bill
…transfer the control of British India to seven commissioners was defeated by the influence of King George III in the House of Lords, but the next year the matter was settled for more than 70 years by Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger’s India Act of 1784. Its essence was…
He drafted the East India Bill of 1783 (of which the Whig statesman Charles James Fox was the nominal author), which proposed that India be governed by a board of independent commissioners in London. After the defeat of the bill, Burke’s indignation came to centre on Warren Hastings, governor-general…
The India Bill passed the Commons but, like every other piece of legislation not directly concerned with taxation, it had to be approved by a majority in the House of Lords. In advance of the vote the king let it be known that he would regard…
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3c30959417a011d1e732572e5cc4779c | https://www.britannica.com/topic/India-Gate | India Gate | India Gate
India Gate, official name Delhi Memorial, originally called All-India War Memorial, monumental sandstone arch in New Delhi, dedicated to the troops of British India who died in wars fought between 1914 and 1919. India Gate, which is located at the eastern end of the Rajpath (formerly called the Kingsway), is about 138 feet (42 metres) in height.
India Gate is one of many British monuments built by order of the Imperial War Graves Commission (later renamed Commonwealth War Graves Commission). The architect was Sir Edwin Lutyens, an Englishman who designed numerous other war memorials and was also the principal planner of New Delhi. The cornerstone was laid in 1921 by the duke of Connaught, third son of Queen Victoria. Construction of the All-India War Memorial, as it was originally known, continued until 1931, the year of the formal dedication of New Delhi as the capital of India.
Lutyens declined to incorporate pointed arches or other Asian motifs in his design but strove instead for classical simplicity. The result is often described as similar in appearance to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. On the rooftop above the archway is a broad shallow domed bowl that was intended to be filled with flaming oil on ceremonial occasions. No fires have been set on the rooftop in recent years, but four eternal flames are now sheltered at the base of the structure. The flames demarcate the Amar Jawan Jyoti, a small monument that has served as India’s tomb of the unknown soldier since 1971.
Inscribed above the archway, in English, is the following dedication:
Most of the place-names in the dedication were theatres of operation in World War I, but the Third Anglo-Afghan War is also singled out. The names of individual Indian soldiers—more than 13,000 of them, according to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission—are inscribed in smaller letters on the monument.
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734e0a199185565e13a57adc744d7fd4 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Indian-Airlines | Indian Airlines | Indian Airlines
Indian Airlines, former domestic and regional airline of India that merged with Air India in 2007, thereafter operating as Air India.
Indian Airlines was founded in 1953. The airline was headquartered in New Delhi and served the Indian subcontinent—India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Myanmar (Burma), and Sri Lanka. In 2005, while remaining under the ownership and operation of Indian Airlines Limited, the airline revamped its image by marketing itself under the name Indian. In 2007 the Indian government approved plans to merge the airline with Air India, forming the National Aviation Company of India Ltd. (NACIL).
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7d1735a36dc4f9c9352305248930caa8 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Indian-Appropriation-Act | Indian Appropriation Act | Indian Appropriation Act
…with the passage of the Indian Appropriation Act (1871), which declared that “hereafter no Indian nation or tribe” would be recognized “as an independent power with whom the United States may contract by treaty.” Indian affairs were thus brought under the legislative control of the Congress to a much greater…
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ccd4b8571c2991a06c2d0d8f9060f751 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Indian-ethnic-group-with-origin-in-India | Indian | Indian
…replaced by indentured labourers from India. The country’s modern-day Indo-Pakistani population stems from this program of replacing slavery with indentured servitude (deemed Britain’s “Great Experiment”); by the time it ended in the 1920s, almost a half million indentured labourers had come from India to work on the sugar plantations.
…and health of the large Indian population of Fiji, but the increase in this population raised the difficult question of the native Fijians’ future. They played a minor part in the economic life of the colony, and the official policy was to keep them within their villages under a separate…
South Africans of Indian descent, who were classified under apartheid as Asian, form a minority. They went to South Africa originally as indentured workers imported by the British to the former Natal colony beginning in the 1850s and were followed by a smaller group of immigrant traders later…
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e2a38def676d70378a1fed48b4f8d7eb | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Indian-National-Army | Indian National Army | Indian National Army
…Indian government, and his so-called Indian National Army (Azad Hind Fauj), alongside Japanese troops, advanced to Rangoon (Yangon) and thence overland into India, reaching Indian soil on March 18, 1944, and moving into Kohima and the plains of Imphal. In a stubborn battle, the mixed Indian and Japanese forces, lacking…
…soldiers became Netaji (“Leader”) Bose’s Indian National Army (INA) in 1943 and, a year later, marched behind him to Rangoon. Bose hoped to “liberate” first Manipur and then Bengal from British rule, but the British forces at India’s eastern gateways held until the summer monsoon gave them respite enough to…
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7fd443e4615f4e4a8a86a1ab4b928e08 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Indian-philosophy/Concepts-of-bhedabheda | Concepts of bhedabheda | Concepts of bhedabheda
The philosophies of transcendence and immanence (bhedabheda) assert both identity and difference between the world and finite individuals on the one hand and brahman on the other. The world and finite individuals are real and yet both different and not different from the brahman.
Among pre-Shankara commentators on the Vedanta-sutras, Bhartriprapancha defended the thesis of bhedabheda, and Bhaskara (c. 9th century) closely followed him. Bhartriprapancha’s commentary is not extant; the only known source of knowledge is Shankara’s reference to him in his commentary on the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, in which Bhartriprapancha is said to have held that though brahman as cause is different from brahman as effect, the two are identical inasmuch as the effect dissolves into the cause, as the waves return into the sea. Bhaskara viewed brahman as both the material and the efficient cause of the world. The doctrine of maya was totally rejected. Brahman undergoes the modifications by its own power. As waves are both different from and identical with the sea, so are the world and the finite individuals in relation to brahman. The finite selves are parts of brahman, as sparks of fire are parts of fire. But the finite soul exists, since beginningless time, under the influence of ignorance. It is atomic in extension and yet animates the whole body. Corresponding to the material world and the finite selves, Bhaskara ascribed to God two powers of self-modification. Bhaskara, in his theory of knowledge, distinguished between self-consciousness that is ever-present and objective knowledge that passively arises out of appropriate causal conditions but is not an activity. Mind, thus, is a sense organ. Bhaskara subscribed to the general Vedanta thesis that knowledge is intrinsically true, though falsity is extrinsic to it. In his ethical views, Bhaskara regarded religious duties as binding at all stages of life. He upheld a theory known as jnana-karmasamuccaya-vada: performance of duties together with knowledge of brahman leads to liberation. In religious life Bhaskara was an advocate of bhakti, but bhakti is not a mere feeling of love or affection for God but rather is dhyana, or meditation, directed toward the transcendent brahman which is not exhausted in its manifestations. Bhaskara denied the possibility of liberation in bodily existence.
The bhedabheda point of view had various other adherents: Vijnanabhikshu, Nimbarka, Vallabha, and Chaitanya.
Ramanuja (11th century) sought to synthesize a long tradition of theistic religion with the absolutistic monism of the Upanishads, a task in which he had been preceded by no less an authority than the Bhagavadgita. In his general philosophical position, he followed the vrittikara Bodhayana, Vakyakara (to whom he referred but whose identity is not established except that he advocated a theory of real modification of brahman), Nathamuni (c. 1000), and his own teachers’ teacher Yamunacharya (c. 1050).
The main religious inspirations are from the theistic tradition of the Azhvar poet-saints and their commentators known as the Acharyas, who sought to combine knowledge with action (karma) as the right means to liberation. There is also, besides the Vedic tradition, the religious tradition of Agamas, particularly of the Pancharatra literature. It is within this old tradition that Ramanuja’s philosophical and religious thought developed.
Ramanuja rejected Shankara’s conception of brahman as an indeterminate, qualityless, and differenceless reality on the ground that such a reality cannot be perceived, known, thought of, or even spoken about, in which case it is nothing short of a fiction. In substantiating this contention, Ramanuja undertook, in his Shri-bhashya on the Vedanta-sutras, a detailed examination of the different ways of knowing. Perception, either nonconceptualized or conceptualized, always apprehends its object as being something, the only difference between the two modes of perception being that the former takes place when one perceives an individual of a certain class for the first time and thus does not subsume it under the same class as some other individuals. Nor can inference provide one with knowledge of an indeterminate reality, because in inference one always knows something as coming under a general rule. The same holds true of verbal testimony. This kind of knowledge arises from understanding sentences. For Ramanuja there is nothing like a pure consciousness without subject and without object. All consciousness is of something and belongs to someone. He also held that it is not true that consciousness cannot be the object of another consciousness. In fact, one’s own past consciousness becomes the object of present consciousness. Consciousness is self-shining only when it reveals an object to its own owner—i.e., the self.
Rejecting Shankara’s conception of reality, Ramanuja defended the thesis that brahman is a being with infinitely perfect excellent virtues, a being whose perfection cannot be exceeded. The world and finite individuals are real, and together they constitute the body of brahman. The category of body and soul is central to his way of thinking. Body is that which can be controlled and moved for the purpose of the spirit. The material world and the conscious spirits, though substantive realities, are yet inseparable from brahman and thus qualify him in the same sense in which body qualifies the soul. Brahman is spiritual-material-qualified. Ramanuja and his followers undertook criticisms of Shankara’s illusionism, particularly of his doctrine of avidya (ignorance) and the falsity of the world. For Ramanuja, such a beginningless, positive avidya could not have any locus or any object, and if it does conceal the self-shining brahman, then there would be no way of escaping from its clutches.
A most striking feature of Ramanuja’s epistemology is his uncompromising realism. Whatever is known is real, and only the real can be known. This led him to advocate the thesis that even the object of error is real—error is really incomplete knowledge—and correction of error is really completion of incomplete knowledge.
The state of moksha is not a state in which the individuality is negated. In fact, the sense of “I” persists even after liberation, for the self is truly the object of the notion of “I.” What is destroyed is egoism, the false sense of independence. The means thereto is bhakti, leading to God’s grace. But by bhakti Ramanuja means dhyana, or intense meditation with love. Obligation to perform one’s scriptural duties is never transcended. Liberation is a state of blessedness in the company of God. A path emphasized by Ramanuja for all persons is complete self-surrender (prapatti) to God’s will and making oneself worthy of his grace. In his social outlook, Ramanuja believed that bhakti does not recognize barriers of caste and classes.
The doctrinal differences among the followers of Ramanuja is not so great as among those of Shankara. Writers such as Sudarshana Suri and Venkatanatha continued to elaborate and defend the theses of the master, and much of their writing is polemical. Some differences are to be found regarding the nature of emancipation, the nature of devotion, and other ritual matters. The followers are divided into two schools: the Uttara-kalarya, led by Venkatanatha, and the Dakshina-kalarya, led by Lokacharya. One of the points at issue is whether or not emancipation is destructible; another is whether there is a difference between liberation attained by mere self-knowledge and that attained by knowledge of God. There also were differences in interpreting the exact nature of self-surrender to God and the degree of passivity or activity required of the worshipper.
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acc29618566b9ed040d5a29aad5112a1 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Indian-philosophy/Early-system-building | Early system building | Early system building
A unique feature of the development of Indian thought was the systematization of each school of thought in the form of sutras, or extremely concise expressions, intended to reduce the doctrines of a science or of a philosophy into a number of memorizable aphorisms, formulas, or rules. The word sutra, originally meaning “thread,” came to mean such concise expressions. A larger work containing a collection of such sutras also came to be called a sutra. The aid of commentaries becomes indispensable for the understanding of the sutras, and it is not surprising that philosophical composition took the form of commentaries and subcommentaries. The earliest sutras, the Kalpa-sutras, however, are not philosophical but ritualistic. These Kalpa-sutras fell into three major parts: the Shrauta-sutras, dealing with Vedic sacrifices; the Grihya-sutras, dealing with the ideal life of a householder; and the Dharma-sutras, dealing with moral injunctions and prohibitions.
In the works of Panini, a Hindu grammarian, the sutra style reached a perfection never attained before and only imperfectly approximated by the later practitioners. The sutra literature began before the rise of Buddhism, though the philosophical sutras all seem to have been composed afterward. The Buddhist sutra (Pali sutta) differs markedly in style and content from the Hindu sutra. Buddhist sutras are rather didactic texts, discourses, or sermons, possibly deriving their name from the sense in which they carry the thread of the tradition of the Buddha’s teachings.
The Purva-mimamsa (“First Reflection”), or Karmamimamsa (“Study of [Ritual] Action”), is the system that investigates the nature of Vedic injunctions. Though this is the primary purpose of the system, this task also led to the development of principles of scriptural interpretation and, therefore, to theories of meaning and hermeneutics (critical interpretations). Jaimini, who composed sutras about the 4th century bce, was critical of earlier Mimamsa authors, particularly of one Badari, to whom is attributed the view that the Vedic injunctions are meant to be obeyed without the expectation of benefits for oneself. According to Jaimini, Vedic injunctions do not merely prescribe actions but also recommend these actions as means to the attainment of desirable goals. For both Jaimini and Shabara (3rd century), his chief commentator, performance of the Vedic sacrifices is conducive to the attainment of heaven; both emphasize that nothing is a duty unless it is instrumental to happiness in the long run.
Jaimini’s central concern is dharma, which is defined as the desired object (artha), whose desirability is testified only by the injunctive statements of the scriptures (chodana-lakshano). In order to substantiate the implied thesis that what ought to be done—i.e., dharma—cannot be decided by either perception or reasoning, Jaimini proceeds to a discussion of the nature of ways of knowing. Because perceptual knowledge arises from contact of the sense organs with reality that is present, dharma that is not an existent reality but a future course of action cannot possibly be known by sense-experience. Reasoning based on such sense-experience is for the same reason useless. Only injunctive statements can state what ought to be done. Commands made by finite individuals are not reliable, because the validity of what they say depends upon the presumption that the persons concerned are free from those defects that render one’s words dependable. Therefore, only the injunctions contained in the scriptures—which, according to Mimamsa and the Hindu tradition, are not composed by any finite individual (apaurusheya)—are the sources of all valid knowledge of dharma. The Mimamsa rejects the belief that the scriptures are utterances of God. The words themselves are authoritative. In accordance with this thesis, Jaimini developed the theory that the relation between words and their meanings is natural (autpattikastu shabdasyarthena sambandhah, or “the relation of word to its meaning is eternal”) and not conventional, that the primary meaning of a word is a universal (which is also eternal), that in a sentence the principal element is the verb, and that the principal force of the verb is that which specifically belongs to the verb with an optative ending and which instigates a person to take a certain course of action in order to effect the desired end.
Though this theory provided the Mimamsa with a psychological and semantic technique for interpreting the sentences of the scriptures that are clearly in the injunctive form, there are also other kinds of sentences: prayers, glorifications, those referring to a thing by a name, and prohibitions. Attempts were therefore made to show how each one of these types of sentences bears, directly or indirectly, on the central, injunctive texts. Furthermore, a systematic classification of the various forms of injunctions is undertaken: those that indicate the general nature of an action, those that show the connection of a subsidiary rite to the main course of action, those that suggest promptness in performance of the action, and those that indicate the right to enjoy the results to be produced by the course of action enjoined.
The commentary of Shabara elaborated on the epistemological themes of the sutras; in particular, Shabara sought to establish the intrinsic validity of experiences and traced the possibility of error to the presence of defects in the ways of knowing. He also critically examined Buddhist subjective idealism and the theory of utter emptiness of things and proved the existence of soul as a separate entity that enjoys the results of one’s actions in this or the next life.
Along with Badari and Jaimini, Badarayana, a contemporary of Jaimini, was the other major interpreter of Vedic thought. Just as the Mimamsa-sutra traditions of Badari’s tradition were revived by Prabhakara, a 7th–8th-century scholar, and Jaimini’s were defended by Shabara and Kumarila, a 7th–8th-century scholar, Badarayana’s sutras laid the basis for the development of Vedanta philosophy. The relation of the Vedanta-sutras to the Mimamsa-sutras, however, is difficult to ascertain. Badarayana approves of the Mimamsa view that the relation between words and their significations is eternal. There are, however, clear statements of difference: according to Jaimini, for example, the dispenser of the “fruits” of one’s actions is dharma, the law of righteousness itself, but for Badarayana it is the supreme lord, Ishvara. Often, Jaimini’s interpretation is contrasted with that of Badari; in such cases, Badarayana sometimes supports Badari’s view and sometimes regards both as defensible.
The overall difference that emerges is that whereas Jaimini lays stress on the ritualistic parts of the Vedas, Badarayana lays stress on the philosophical portions—i.e., the Upanishads. The former recommends the path of Vedic injunctions, hence the ideal of karma; the latter recommends the path of knowledge. The central concept of Jaimini’s investigation is dharma—i.e., what ought to be done; the central theme of Badarayana’s investigations is brahman—i.e., the Absolute Reality. The relationship between these two treatises remains a matter of controversy between later commentators—Ramanuja, a great South Indian philosopher of the 11th–12th centuries, defending the thesis that they jointly constitute a single work with Jaimini’s coming first and Badarayana’s coming after it in logical order, and Shankara, an earlier great South Indian philosopher of the 8th–9th centuries, in favour of the view that the two are independent of each other and possibly also inconsistent in their central theses.
Badarayana’s sutras have four books (adhyayas), each book having four chapters (padas). The first book is concerned with the theme of samanvaya (“reconciliation”). The many conflicting statements of the scriptures are all said to agree in converging on one central theme: the concept of brahman, the one Absolute Being from whom all beings arise, in whom they are maintained, and into whom they return. The second book establishes avirodha (“consistency”) by showing the following: (1) that dualism and Vaisheshika atomism are neither sustainable interpretations of the scriptures nor defensible rationally; (2) that though consciousness cannot conceivably arise out of a nonconscious nature, the material world could arise out of spirit; (3) that the effect in its essence is not different from the cause; and (4) that though brahman is all-perfect and has no want, creation is an entirely unmotivated free act of delight (lila). The Yogachara Buddhist view that there are no external objects but only minds and their conceptions is refuted, as also the Buddhist doctrine of the momentariness of all that is. The Jain pluralism and the theism of the Pashupatas and the Bhagavatas are also rejected. Because, according to Vedanta, only brahman is external, the third and the fourth chapters of the second book undertake to show that nothing else is eternal. The third book concerns the spiritual discipline and the various stages by which the finite individual (jiva) may realize an essential identity with brahman. The fourth and last book deals with the final result of the modes of discipline outlined in the preceding book and distinguishes between the results achieved by worshipping a personal Godhead and those achieved by knowing the one brahman. Included is some discussion of the possible “worlds” through which the spirits travel after death, but all this discussion is subordinate to the one dominant goal of liberation and consequent escape from the chain of rebirth.
Badarayana’s sutras refer to interpreters of Vedanta before him who were concerned with such central issues as the relation between the finite individual soul (jiva) and the Absolute (brahman) and the possible bodily existence of a liberated individual. To Ashmarthya, an early Vedanta interpreter, is ascribed the view that the finite individual and the Absolute are both identical and different (as causes and their effects are different—a view that seems to have been the ancestor of the later theory of Bhedabheda). Audulomi, another pre-Badarayana Vedanta philosopher, is said to have held the view that the finite individual becomes identical with brahman after going through a process of purification. Another interpreter, Kashakritsna, holds that the two are identical—a view that anticipates the later “unqualified monism” of Shankara. Badarayana’s own views on this issue are difficult to ascertain: the sutras are so concise that they are capable of various interpretations, though there are reasons to believe that Ramanuja’s is closer to their intentions than Shankara’s.
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11655856394f107ee11795660888c932 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Indian-philosophy/Further-developments-of-the-system | Further developments of the system | Further developments of the system
Though the beginnings of Mahayana are to be found in the Mahasangikas and many of their early sects, Nagarjuna gave it a philosophical basis. Not only is the individual person empty and lacking an eternal self, according to Nagarjuna, but the dharmas also are empty. He extended the concept of shunyata to cover all concepts and all entities. Emptiness thus means subjection to the law of causality or “dependent origination” (pratitya-samutpada) and lack of an immutable essence and an invariant mark (nihsvabhavata). It also entails a repudiation of dualities between the conditioned and the unconditioned, between subject and object, relative and absolute, and between samsara and nirvana. Thus, Nagarjuna arrived at an ontological monism, but he carried through an epistemological dualism (i.e., a theory of knowledge based on two sets of criteria) between two orders of truth: the conventional (samvritti) and the transcendental (paramartha). The one reality is ineffable. Nagarjuna undertook a critical examination of all the major categories with which philosophers had sought to understand reality and showed them all to involve self-contradictions. The world is viewed as a network of relations, but relations are unintelligible. If two terms, A and B, are related by the relation R, then either A and B are different or they are identical. If they are identical, they cannot be related; if they are altogether different then they cannot also be related, for they would have no common ground. The notion of “partial identity and partial difference” is also rejected as unintelligible. The notion of causality is rejected on the basis of similar reasonings. The concepts of change, substance, self, knowledge, and universals do not fare any better. Nagarjuna also directed criticism against the concept of pramana, or the means of valid knowledge.
Nagarjuna’s philosophy is also called Madhyamika, or “Middle Path,” because it claims to tread the middle path, which consists not in synthesizing opposed views such as “The real is permanent” and “The real is changing” but in showing the hollowness of both the claims. To say that reality is both permanent and changing is to make another metaphysical assertion, another viewpoint, whose opposite is “Reality is neither permanent nor changing.” In relation to the former, the latter is a higher truth, but the latter is still a point of view, a drishti, expressed in a metaphysical statement, though Nagarjuna condemned all metaphysical statements as false.
Nagarjuna used reason to condemn reason. Those of his disciples who continued to limit the use of logic to this negative and indirect method, known as prasanga, are called the prasangikas; of these, Aryadeva, Buddhapalita, and Chandrakirti are the most important. Bhavaviveka, however, followed the method of direct reasoning and thus founded what is called the svatantra (independent) school of Madhyamika philosophy. With him Buddhist logic comes to its own, and during his time the Yogacharas split away from the Shunyavadins.
Converted by his brother Asanga to the Yogachara, Vasubandhu wrote the Vijnapti-matrata-siddhi (“Establishment of the Thesis of Cognitions—Only”), in which he defended the thesis that the supposedly external objects are merely mental conceptions. Yogachara idealism is a logical development of Sautrantika representationism: the conception of a merely inferred external world is not satisfying. If consciousness is self-intimating (svaprakasha) and if consciousness can assume forms (sakaravijnana), it seems more logical to hold that the forms ascribed to alleged external objects are really forms of consciousness. One only needs another conception: a beginningless power that would account for this tendency of consciousness to take up forms and to externalize them. This is the power of kalpana, or imagination. Yogachara added two other modes of consciousness to the traditional six: ego consciousness (manovijnana) and storehouse consciousness (alaya-vijnana). The alaya-vijnana contains stored traces of past experiences, both pure and defiled seeds. Early anticipations of the notions of the subconscious or the unconscious, they are theoretical constructs to account for the order of individual experience. It still remained, however, to account for a common world—which in fact remains the main difficulty of Yogachara. The state of nirvana becomes a state in which the alaya with its stored “seeds” would wither away (alayaparavritti). Though the individual ideas are in the last resort mere imaginations, in its essential nature consciousness is without distinctions of subject and object. This ineffable consciousness is the “suchness” (tathata) underlying all things. Neither the alaya nor the tathata, however, is to be construed as being substantial.
Vasubandhu and Asanga are also responsible for the growth of Buddhist logic. Vasubandhu defined perception as the knowledge that is caused by the object, but this was rejected by Dignaga, a 5th-century logician, as a definition belonging to his earlier realistic phase. Vasubandhu defined inference as a knowledge of an object through its mark, but Dharmottara, an 8th-century commentator, pointed out that this is not a definition of the essence of inference but only of its origin.
Dignaga’s Pramanasamuccaya (“Compendium of the Means of True Knowledge”) is one of the greatest works on Buddhist logic. Dignaga gave a new definition of perception: a knowledge that is free from all conceptual constructions, including name and class concepts. In effect, he regarded only the pure sensation as perception. In his theory of inference, he distinguished between inference for oneself and inference for the other and laid down three criteria of a valid middle term (hetu)—that it should “cover” the minor premise (paksha), be present in the similar instances (sapaksha), and be absent in dissimilar instances (vipaksha). In his Hetuchakra (“The Wheel of ‘Reason’ ”), Dignaga set up a matrix of nine types of middle terms, of which two yield valid conclusions, two contradictory, and the rest uncertain conclusions. Dignaga’s tradition is further developed in the 7th century by Dharmakirti, who modified his definition of perception to include the condition “unerring” and distinguished, in his Nyayabindu, between four kinds of perception: that by the five senses, that by the mind, self-consciousness, and perception of the yogins. He also introduced a threefold distinction of valid middle terms: the middle must be related to the major either by identity (“This is a tree, because this is an oak”) or as cause and effect (“This is fiery, because it is smoky”), or the hetu is a nonperception from which the absence of the major could be inferred. Dharmakirti consolidated the central epistemological thesis of the Buddhists that perception and inference have their own exclusive objects. The object of the former is the pure particular (svalakshana), and the object of the latter (he regarded judgments as containing elements of inference) is the universal (samanyalakshana). In their metaphysical positions, Dignaga and Dharmakirti represent a moderate form of idealism.
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90a8b79db12c9e3547796b3dc4d57089 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Indian-philosophy/Vedanta | Vedanta | Vedanta
No commentary on the Vedanta-sutras survives from the period before Shankara, though both Shankara and Ramanuja referred to the vrittis by Bodhayana and Upavarsha (the two may indeed be the same person). There are, however, pre-Shankara monistic interpreters of the scriptures, three of whom are important: Bhartrihari, Mandana (both mentioned earlier), and Gaudapada. Shankara referred to Gaudapada as the teacher of his own teacher Govinda, complimented him for having recovered the advaita (nondualism) doctrine from the Vedas, and also wrote a bhashya on Gaudapada’s main work: the karikas on the Mandukya Upanishad.
Gaudapada’s karikas are divided into four parts: the first part is an explanation of the Upanishad itself, the second part establishes the unreality of the world, the third part defends the oneness of reality, and the fourth part, called Alatashanti (“Extinction of the Burning Coal”), deals with the state of release from suffering. It is not accidental that Gaudapada used as the title of the fourth part of his work a phrase in common usage among Buddhist authors. His philosophical views show a considerable influence of Madhyamika Buddhism, particularly of the Yogachara school, and one of his main purposes probably was to demonstrate that the teachings of the Upanishads are compatible with the main doctrines of the Buddhist idealists. Among his principal philosophical theses were the following: All things are as unreal as those seen in a dream, for waking experience and dream are on a par in this regard. In reality, there is no production and no destruction. His criticisms of the categories of change and causality are reminiscent of Nagarjuna’s. Duality is imposed on this one reality by maya, or the power of illusion-producing ignorance. Because there is no real coming into being, Gaudapada’s philosophy is often called ajativada (“discourse on the unborn”). Though thus far agreeing with the Buddhist Yogacharins, Gaudapada rejected their thesis that chitta, or mind, is real and that there is a real flow of mental conception.
Shankara greatly moderated Gaudapada’s extreme illusionistic theory. Though he regarded the phenomenal world as a false appearance, he never made use of the analogy of dream. Rather, he contrasted the objectivity of the world with the subjectivity of dreams and hallucinations. The distinction between the empirical and the illusory—both being opposed to the transcendental—is central to his way of thinking.
Though Vedanta is frequently referred to as one darshana (viewpoint), there are, in fact, radically different schools of Vedanta; what binds them together is common adherence to a common set of texts. These texts are the Upanishads, the Vedanta-sutras, and the Bhagavadgita—known as the three prasthanas (the basic scriptures, or texts) of the Vedanta. The founders of the various schools of Vedanta have all substantiated their positions by commenting on these three sourcebooks. The problems and issues around which their differences centre are the nature of brahman; the status of the phenomenal world; the relation of finite individuals to the brahman; and the nature and the means to moksha, or liberation. The main schools are: Shankara’s unqualified nondualism (shuddhadvaita); Ramanuja’s qualified nondualism (vishishtadvaita); Madhva’s dualism (dvaita); Bhaskara’s doctrine of identity and difference (bhedabheda); and the schools of Nimbarka and Vallabha, which assert both identity and difference though with different emphasis on either of the two aspects. From the religious point of view, Shankara extolled metaphysical knowledge as the sole means to liberation and regarded even the concept of God as false; Ramanuja recommended the path of bhakti combined with knowledge and showed a more tolerant attitude toward the tradition of Vedic ritualism; and Madhva, Nimbarka, and Vallabha all propounded a personalistic theism in which love and devotion to a personal God are rated highest. Although Shankara’s influence on Indian philosophy could not be matched by these other schools of Vedanta, in actual religious life the theistic Vedanta schools have exercised a much greater influence than the abstract metaphysics of Shankara.
Shankara’s philosophy is one among a number of other nondualistic philosophies: Bhartrihari’s shabhadvaita, the Buddhist’s vijnanadvaita, and Gaudapada’s ajativada. Shankara’s system may then be called atmadvaita—the thesis that the one, universal, eternal, and self-illuminating self whose essence is pure consciousness without a subject (ashraya) and without an object (vishaya) from a transcendental point of view alone is real. The phenomenal world and finite individuals, though empirically real, are—from the higher point of view—merely false appearances. In substantiating this thesis, Shankara relied as much on the interpretation of scriptural texts as on reasoning. He set down a methodological principle that reason should be used only to justify truths revealed in the scriptures. His own use of reasoning was primarily negative; he showed great logical skill in refuting his opponents’ theories. Shankara’s followers, however, supplied what is missed in his works—i.e., a positive rational support for his thesis.
Shankara’s metaphysics is based on a criterion of reality, which may be briefly formulated as follows: the real is that whose negation is not possible. It is then argued that the only thing that satisfies this criterion is consciousness, because denial of consciousness presupposes the consciousness that denies. It is conceivable that any object is not existent, but the absence of consciousness is not conceivable. Negation may be either mutual negation (of difference) or absence. The latter is either absence of a thing prior to its origination or after its destruction or absence of a thing in a place other than where it is present. If the negation of consciousness is not conceivable, then none of these various kinds of negations can be predicated of consciousness. If difference cannot be predicated of it, then consciousness is the only reality and anything different from it would be unreal. If the other three kinds of absence are not predicable of it, then consciousness should be beginningless, without end, and ubiquitous. Consequently, it would be without change. Furthermore, consciousness is self-intimating; all objects depend upon consciousness for their manifestation. Difference may be either among members of the same class or of one individual from another of a different class or among parts of one entity. None of these is true of consciousness. In other words, there are not many consciousnesses; the plurality of many centres of consciousness should be viewed as an appearance. There is no reality other than consciousness—i.e., no real prakriti; such a thing would only be an unreal other. Also, consciousness does not have internal parts; there are not many conscious states. The distinction between consciousness of blue and consciousness of yellow is not a distinction within consciousness but one superimposed on it by a distinction among its objects, blue and yellow. With this, the Samkhya, Vijnanavadin Buddhist, and Nyaya-Vaisheshika pluralism are refuted. Reality is one, infinite, eternal, and self-shining spirit; it is without any determination, for all determination is negation.
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3be984fc3cec703bfc775f9d5cdf4cd0 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Indian-religion | Indian religion | Indian religion
India, in both Hindu and Buddhist texts, has developed the most complex system of world ages and worlds that arise and come to an end. Here, too, the number four is important—e.g., the four ages (yugas) of decreasing length and increasing evil. Many writings, often…
…goddesses (earth mothers) of non-Vedic India still incorporate numerous features of hunt deities, and, because of indigenous influences, the Vedic gods and their wives (e.g., Parvati, Uma, and Durga) have their abodes on mountains. The isolated mountains of East Africa, surrounded by clouds, are believed to be the dwelling places…
The religious traditions of India embody a variety of attitudes toward celibacy. In Hinduism the priesthood is hereditary and thus not celibate. Among the prominent religious personages of India, however, are the sadhus (“holy men”), who live a life free of possessions and family obligation. The sadhus have no…
The changing features of social and economic life were linked to religious and intellectual changes. Orthodox traditions maintained in certain sections of Vedic literature were questioned by teachers referred to in the Upanishads and Aranyakas and by others whose speculations and philosophy are recorded…
The distinction between ordinary dress and religious dress is difficult to delineate in India because the ordinary members of the various socioreligious groups may often be distinguished by their costumes. For example, Parsi (Indian Zoroastrian) women wear the sari (robe) on the right…
…in the Vedas of ancient India as an all-seeing god who observes both good and evil actions. He expels not only darkness but also evil dreams and diseases. Sun heroes and sun kings also occupy a central position in Indian mythology, where Vivasvant, the father of Yama, corresponds to the…
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fa759e694bcf2b63c825d7229b751490 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Indian-South-Equatorial-Current | Indian South Equatorial Current | Indian South Equatorial Current
There is, however, an Indian South Equatorial Current. Flowing westerly with the trades north of latitude 22° S, it divides to form the East Africa Coastal Current, moving northward, and a south-flowing stream. The latter passes by Madagascar as the Mozambique (west) and Mascarene currents, which become the Agulhas…
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b745b62a8ab898b03ab0a43650c8715e | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Indiana-Jones-and-the-Last-Crusade | Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade | Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
…closed out the 1980s with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) and Always (1989), an adaptation of the 1943 film A Guy Named Joe. Although Indiana Jones was a hit, Always failed to find an audience.
…the Temple of Doom (1984), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008). Comic-book artist and character designer Jim Steranko provided Jones with his iconic flight jacket, fedora, and bullwhip, and actor Harrison Ford gave the hero a charismatic on-screen…
In Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) Connery played the title figure’s father, and in The Hunt for Red October (1990) he played a defecting Soviet submarine captain. Connery’s memorable films of the 1990s included Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991), First Knight (1995), The…
…Temple of Doom (1984) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) were produced by Lucas and directed by Steven Spielberg. They featured Ford as a swashbuckling 1930s action hero whose larger-than-life qualities were tempered with a charming vulnerability. He expanded his repertoire in the science-fiction classic Blade Runner (1982),…
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a3cf2a20fb465f33fb2bdc18496959e2 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Indica-by-Megasthenes | Indica | Indica
…an account of India, the Indica, in four books. An Ionian, he was sent by the Hellenistic king Seleucus I on embassies to the Mauryan emperor Chandragupta. He gave the most complete account of India then known to the Greek world and was the source for work by the later…
In his four-volume Indica, he wrote:
…form of a book, the Indica. Although the original has been lost, extensive quotations from it survive in the works of the later Greek writers Strabo, Diodorus, and Arrian. A major treatise on political economy in Sanskrit is the Artha-shastra of Kautilya (or Canakya, as he is sometimes called). Kautilya,…
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a26db3b976fde0446281bafa2eeb21b4 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/indicative-planning | Indicative planning | Indicative planning
…dirigisme took the form of indicative planning, which entailed government credit policies and subsidies, developing new technologies, and the regulation of employment overseen by a special planning commission, the Commissariat au Plan. The French government also embarked on ambitious projects, encouraging the formation of national champions in large industry groups,…
…planning, those done according to indicative planning (in which central planning of economic outcomes is indirectly implemented), and those governed by market forces. The second and third categories have grown at the expense of the first, but goods of national importance and almost all large-scale construction have remained under the…
…such as the establishment of indicative planning figures (IPFs, or funds a country could expect to receive over a five-year time frame) to assist with long-term development planning. Hoffman was a director of Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., and of Encyclopædia Britannica Educational Corporation.
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136d90cb092dbf6381a3a80e5b946f29 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/individual-dynamic-psychotherapy | Individual dynamic psychotherapy | Individual dynamic psychotherapy
Although the influence of psychoanalysis, particularly on American psychiatry, was profound, it began to wane in the 1970s. Since then, those seeking treatment have tended to choose short-term individual dynamic therapy over psychoanalysis. This form of therapy is usually more accessible and less…
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3da0405fdf51f2b520de27064791a214 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Individuals-with-Disabilities-Education-Act | Individuals with Disabilities Education Act | Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
…school districts under the 1990 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) are not entitled to reimbursement for costs associated with hiring expert witnesses and consultants.
…of 1974 (EHA; renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act [IDEA] in 1990), as amended by the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, did not require that the special instruction and supportive services provided under the law by state governments to disabled students be designed to help them…
…ruled (7–2) that the 1990 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires school boards to provide continuous nursing services to disabled students who need them during the school day.
…revision and was renamed the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA); the law was significantly updated again in 2004. Reforms aimed to place handicapped children in the least-restrictive environment and, where possible, to “mainstream” them in regular schools and classes.
…1975 (the forerunner of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act [IDEA] of 1990), the mainstreaming of blind children became a right. Schools for the blind diminished in importance in favour of integration of the blind with the sighted.
…ruled (5–4) that under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), a public school board was required to provide the on-site services of a sign-language interpreter to a hearing-impaired student in a private religious school. The court rejected arguments that it violated the First Amendment’s establishment clause.
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2a79a852aeb6c4943b9391272b869801 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Indo-Iranian-languages/Characteristics-of-Iranian-and-Indo-Aryan | Characteristics of Iranian and Indo-Aryan | Characteristics of Iranian and Indo-Aryan
The close relation between the Iranian and Indo-Aryan groups has never been doubted. They share linguistic features to such a degree that Indo-Iranian is generally described as a distinct subgroup of Indo-European. For example, the long and short varieties of the Indo-European vowels e and o appear as ā and ă (a macron [¯] indicates a long vowel, while a breve [˘] indicates a short vowel): Sanskrit as ‘be’ (3rd person singular present indicative astì), aṣṭan- ‘eight’ (nominative-accusative plural aṣṭau), mánas- ‘mind,’ aj ‘lead, drive’ (3rd sg. pres. indic. ajàti), dhā ‘put, make’ (3rd sg. pres. indic. dadhāti); Avestan asti ‘is,’ asta- ‘eight,’ manah- ‘mind, spirit,’ azaiti ‘leads,’ daδāitī, ‘makes’; but Greek estì ‘is,’ óktō ‘eight,’ ménos ‘ardor, force,’ ágei ‘leads,’ títhēmi ‘I put, make.’
Traces of the earlier vocalic system are reflected in certain phonological alternations. Thus, verbal bases that in Sanskrit have initial velar consonants have corresponding palatals in reduplicated syllables that occur in certain categories, as with kar/kṛ ‘do, make’ (3rd sg. pres. indic. karoti, 3rd sg. fut. kariṣyati, 3rd sg. aor. akārṣīt), gam ‘go’ (3rd sg. pres. indic. gacchati, 3rd sg. fut. gamiṣyati, 3rd sg. aor. agamat)—but 3rd sg. pfct. ca-kār-a and ja-gām-a. Similarly, Avestan cāxrarə (3rd pl. pfct.) and jsγmiiąm (1st sg. pfct. optative) have palatal c- and j- instead of the velar consonants of the bases kar ‘do, make’ and gam ‘go.’
Conversely, the perfect of Sanskrit han ‘strike, kill’ (3rd sg. pres. indic. hanti, 3rd sg. fut. haniṣyati) has the velar -gh- in the root syllable of perfect forms such as ja-ghān-a (3rd sg.). The long -ā- in such forms reflects a development of Proto-Indo-European -o- in open syllables. Greek forms of the type lé-loip-e ‘left’ (3rd sg. pfct.) show e in the reduplicated syllable and -o- in the root syllable. Similarly, Sanskrit causatives such as sād-ay-a-ti ‘seats,’ from the base sad ‘sit’ (3rd sg. pres. indic. sīdati, 3rd sg. aor. asadat), show -ā- in open syllables. The comparable Germanic formation, seen in Gothic satjan ‘seat,’ shows -a- as a regular development from Proto-Indo-European o.
In instances in which some Indo-European languages have a vowel a, Indo-Iranian has i as a reflex of Proto-Indo-European sounds called laryngeals—e.g., Greek patḗr ‘father,’ Sanskrit pitṛ- (nom. sing. pitā́), Avestan and Old Persian pitar-. After stems ending in short or long a, i, or u, an n generally occurs with the genitive (possessive) plural ending ām, reflecting an innovation modelled on stems ending in -n—e.g., Sanskrit martyānām ‘of mortals, men,’ Avestan masiiānąm, and Old Persian martiyānām.
In addition to several other similarities in their grammatical systems, Indo-Aryan and Iranian have significant vocabulary items in common—e.g., such religious terms as Sanskrit yajña- ‘rite of worship, sacrificial rite,’ Avestan yasna- ‘worship, act of worship, sacrifice’; and Sanskrit hotṛ-, Avestan zaotar- ‘a certain ritual officiant’; Sanskrit soma- and Avestan haoma-, which refer to a ritually important juice pressed from a plant; and names of divinities and mythological persons, such as Sanskrit mitra-, Avestan miθra- ‘Mithra.’ In addition, speakers of both language subgroups used comparable terms to refer to themselves as a people: Sanskrit ārya-, Avestan airiia-, Old Persian ariya- ‘Aryan.’
Although they have many similarities, the Indo-Aryan and Iranian language subgroups also differ from each other in a number of linguistic features. For example, Indo-Aryan has an i/ī sound representing a Proto-Indo-European laryngeal sound not only in initial syllables but also, generally, in interior syllables, as in Sanskrit duhitṛ- ‘daughter’ (cf. Greek thugátēr). In Iranian, the original laryngeal is lost in this position, as in Avestan dugədar-, duγδdar-. Similarly, Sanskrit bravīti ‘speaks, says,’ vṛṇīte ‘chooses,’ but Avestan mraoiti, vərəṇtē. Iranian also has replaced Indo-Iranian aspirated voiced consonants (pronounced with a puff of breath, written h) with corresponding unaspirated consonants—e.g., Sanskrit gharma- ‘warmth,’ dhā ‘put, make,’ and bhṛ, ‘carry, bear’ but Avestan garəma- ‘warm’ and Avestan and Old Persian dā, bar. Further, Iranian changed stops such as p before certain consonants to spirants such as f: Sanskrit pra ‘forth,’ Avestan frā̆; Old Persian fra; Sanskrit putra- ‘son,’ Avestan puθra-, Old Persian pus͜sa- (s͜s represents a sound that is also transliterated as ç). In addition, h replaces s in Iranian except before nonnasal stops (produced by releasing the breath only through the mouth) and after i, u, r, vocalic r, and k; Avestan hapta- ‘seven,’ hauruua- ‘whole, Old Persian haruva- ‘whole,’ as opposed to Sanskrit sapta-, sarva-.
Iranian also has both xš and š sounds, resulting from different Proto-Indo-European consonant clusters, but Indo-Aryan has only kṣ—e.g., Avestan xšayeiti ‘has power, is capable,’ šaēiti ‘dwells’ but Sanskrit kṣayati, kṣeti. Iranian was also relatively conservative in retaining at an early period the diphthongs ai and au, which were changed to simple vowels e and o in Indo-Aryan, and long diphthongs that were shortened to ai and au in Indo-Aryan. The earlier diphthongs are nevertheless reflected by certain Indo-Aryan alternations. Thus, prevocalic -ay- and -au- alternate with preconsonantal e and o; e.g., jay-a-ti (3rd sg. pres. indic.) ‘conquers, is victorious,’ stav-a- ‘praise’ and je-tum (infinitive) ‘to conquer,’ sto-tum ‘to praise.’ In addition, under conditions that determine the use of extralong vowels in final syllables of words, corresponding to vocative singulars in -e or -o such as agne ‘Agni!’ and vāyo ‘Vāyu!,’ one finds agnā3i and vāyā3u, with an extralong segment ā of three morae (indicated by the -3- in the phonetic spelling) followed by i and u.
Iranian differs from Indo-Aryan in grammatical features as well. The dative singular of -a- stems ends in -āi in Iranian—e.g., Avestan mašiiāi ‘mortal, man,’ Old Persian cartainaiy ‘to do’ (an original dative singular form of an action noun, functioning as infinitive of the verb). In Sanskrit the ending is extended with -a: martyāy-a. Avestan also retains the archaic pronoun forms yūš, yūžəm ‘you’ (nominative plural); in Indo-Aryan the -s- was replaced by -y- (yūyam) on the model of the first person plural—vayam ‘we’ (Avestan vaēm, Old Persian vayam). Further, Iranian has a third person pronoun di (accusative dim) that has no counterpart in Indo-Aryan.
On the basis of particular phonological developments, some scholars have recognized a distinct Nūristānī group consisting of Ashkun, Kati, Prasun, Waigali, and Tregami (all spoken in the Hindu Kush), in addition to the Indo-Aryan and Indo-Iranian groups. For example, Indo-Aryan regularly has ś as a reflex of Proto-Indo-European *j (e.g., Sanskrit keśa- ‘hair,’ śvan-/śun- ‘dog’), but Nūristānī languages show an affricate (ts, usually transcribed ċ) for this—e.g., Kati and Waigali kēċ ‘hair,’ Waigali and Tregami ċū̃ ‘dog.’ The situation is complicated by the fact that š also appears for *j—e.g., Waigali dōš ‘ten’ as opposed to Kati duċ (Sanskrit daśan-).
Other scholars, however, consider Nūristānī a subgroup of Indo-Aryan, and certain cultural facts are considered to support this view. For example, Ashkun imrā́, Kati ímro, Waigali yamrái, Prasun yumrā́ ‘name of a supreme deity (king Yama)’ are comparable to an Old Indo-Aryan compound of yama- ‘Yama (lord of the dead)’ and rājan- ‘king.’ A reasonable hypothesis to account for these and other linguistic facts is that the Nūristānī languages represent a group of early Indo-Aryan people that remained behind, separated from the main body of Indo-Aryan speakers that migrated into the area of the Punjab. However, as yet there is no scholarly consensus on this issue.
Quite recently, evidence was made available suggesting that Bangani, spoken in the area of Bangan—in westernmost Garwhal, Uttarakhand—is a centum language within the Indo-Aryan area. For example, Bangani dɔkɔ ‘ten’ and dɔkru ‘tear’ have k, as does a centum language like Latin (decem, lacrima), as opposed to Indo-Aryan, which has a spirant representing Proto-Indo-European *ḱ, as do other satem languages: note Sanskrit daśan-, aśru-. This claim is still being debated.
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d80282bd4fc22209b5f9692c1a912139 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Indomitable-Lions | Indomitable Lions | Indomitable Lions
…when the national team, the Indomitable Lions, won the African Cup of Nations in 1984 and in 2000 and when it became the first African team to advance to the semifinals of the World Cup in 1990. In 1999 the Lions won the gold medal at the All-Africa Games.
…national team, known as the Indomitable Lions, was a driving force in this process. After being eliminated without losing a match at the 1982 World Cup in Spain (tied with Italy in its group, Cameroon lost the tiebreaker on the basis of total goals scored), Cameroon reached the quarterfinals at…
…national team, known as the Indomitable Lions, became world famous. He was the leading scorer in the two African Cup of Nations victories claimed by Cameroon in 1984 and 1988. He played in the 1982 World Cup finals, when Cameroon earned international respect after a superb performance in the tournament.…
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5f5fdbe17d3e37f360799172d762b737 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Indonesian-Democratic-Party-of-Struggle | Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle | Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle
Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), Indonesian Partai Demokrasi Indonesia-Perjuangan, political party in Indonesia formed in 1973 through the forced merger of five non-Islamic political parties. In the final three decades of the 20th century, it was one of two opposition parties officially recognized by the government. Although it often was supportive of the policies of President Suharto, its antigovernment faction—led by Megawati Sukarnoputri, daughter of Sukarno, Indonesia’s first president—was instrumental in Suharto’s fall from power in 1998.
In 1973 Suharto’s authoritarian regime implemented political reforms to limit the power of opposition groups and the number of recognized political entities to three: Golkar, a pro-government group that controlled state institutions; and two opposition parties, the Indonesian Democratic Party (later the PDI-P) and the United Development Party. The Indonesian Democratic Party was created from three nationalist groups and two Christian-based parties: the Indonesian Nationalist Party, the Movement for the Defense of Indonesian Independence, the People’s Party, the Catholic Party, and the Christian Party. The uneasy merger of groups that did not share a coherent political ideology resulted in poor electoral performances, which prompted the government—fearing that the Muslim-based United Development Party might become the sole opposition party and pose a threat to its rule—to intervene to strengthen its support of the Indonesian Democratic Party.
In the 1980s and early ’90s the Indonesian Democratic Party rapidly expanded its vote share by appealing to voters frustrated by apparent inequalities in Indonesia’s social and economic structure. Because the party blamed the country’s social ills on the governing regime, Suharto attempted to undermine it. When the party selected Megawati as its leader, the government engineered her removal with the aid of a faction opposed to her. Her dismissal precipitated mass protests and violence in Jakarta, and Megawati and her supporters eventually established a new political party, the PDI-P, to challenge the government.
In 1999 the PDI-P won the largest number of seats in the legislature, and in 2001 Megawati was elected president of Indonesia. In the 2004 parliamentary elections, however, the PDI-P was supplanted by Golkar as the largest party in the lower chamber of the newly formed bicameral legislature, and in July 2004 Megawati was defeated in her bid for reelection. The party again fared poorly in the 2009 legislative and presidential elections, but in the 2014 legislative polls it again garnered the largest number of seats, though it was unable to form a majority coalition. In July 2014 Joko Widodo (Jokowi), governor of Jakarta, was elected president of the country.
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f4b038b7f00c0bc5de1c39ee608a198c | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Indonesian-language | Indonesian language | Indonesian language
…of the Republic of Indonesia, Bahasa Indonesia, or Indonesian. A Malay pidgin called Bazaar Malay (mĕlayu pasar, “market Malay”) was widely used as a lingua franca in the East Indian archipelago and was the basis of the colonial language used in Indonesia by the Dutch. The version of Bazaar Malay…
…in counting objects, as with Bahasa Indonesia se-buah rumah ‘a house’ (literally, ‘one-fruit house’), se-orang guru ‘a teacher’ (literally, ‘one-person teacher’), or se-batang rokok ‘a cigarette’ (literally, ‘one-trunk cigarette’). In some languages of Micronesia the traditional counting systems were highly complex, with upwards of 30 number classifiers that distinguished counted…
…to propagate the national language, Bahasa Indonesia, and to unify the country’s disparate ethnic groups and scattered islands. The government also initiated one of Asia’s most successful family-planning programs in order to slow down the growth of Indonesia’s large population. These successes were increasingly marred, however, by the inequitable distribution…
>Bahasa Indonesia, but hundreds of local languages and dialects remain in use across the vast archipelago. Javanese, for example, has more than twice as many native speakers as Bahasa Indonesia. The Philippines, which also has hundreds of local languages and dialects, has adopted Pilipino (or…
Indonesian (Bahasa Indonesia) is the national language. It evolved from a literary style of Malay language that was used in the royal houses of the Riau-Jambi area of eastern Sumatra, but it also has much in common with other Malay dialects that have long served…
Malay and Indonesian are, respectively, the official languages of Malaysia and Indonesia; these languages are quite similar and are mutually intelligible. Indonesian is a good example of a true national language and is spoken widely across the archipelago. Thus, unlike in Myanmar, language actually has been a…
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78a4aefd53d6fd066ca5acbe6ec3f04f | https://www.britannica.com/topic/indriya | Indriya | Indriya
Indriya, (Sanskrit: “faculty”), according to Indian philosophy, the instruments of a person’s direct perception of the outside world. They are of two kinds, motoric and sensory. The motoric faculties are those of speaking, grasping, walking, ejaculating, and evacuating. The sensory faculties, or senses, are hearing, touching, seeing, tasting, and smelling. Both sets of faculties are correlated with the five elements, respectively: ether, wind, fire, water, and earth. Simultaneous separate impressions of the senses are coordinated in the “mind,” which is often called the 11th faculty.
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385a85dbbcc4a51f5fb13ea51bf46c5b | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Industrial-and-Commercial-Bank-of-China | Industrial and Commercial Bank of China | Industrial and Commercial Bank of China
…industrial and construction enterprises; the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, which conducts ordinary commercial transactions and acts as a savings bank for the public; the Agricultural Bank of China, which serves the agricultural sector; and the China Investment Bank, which handles foreign investment. Many foreign banks maintain offices in…
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2be0cc926370645b3c6369ceeded48fa | https://www.britannica.com/topic/industrial-country | Industrial country | Industrial country
In developed countries, transportation and household energy use make up the largest component of an individual’s carbon footprint. For example, approximately 40 percent of total emissions in the United States during the first decade of the 21st century were from those sources. Such emissions are included…
…paralleled those of the more economically advanced nations, which ultimately would lead to a global convergence of societies. Challenging the theory as a conservative defense of the West, Immanuel Wallerstein’s The Modern World System (1974) proposed a more pessimistic world-system theory of stratification. Wallerstein averred that advanced industrial nations would…
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2a43d9b8aee4df6dd156adad76a9705a | https://www.britannica.com/topic/industrial-design?anchor=ref920795 | Industrial design | Industrial design
Industrial design, the design of mass-produced consumer products. Industrial designers, often trained as architects or other visual arts professionals, are usually part of a larger creative team. Their primary responsibility is to help produce manufactured items that not only work well but please the eye and, therefore, have a competitive advantage over similar products. The work of an industrial designer often relates to or includes graphic design, such as advertising and packaging, corporate imagery and branding, and interior design (also called interior architecture or environmental design), the arrangement of man-made spaces.
Industrial design is a largely 20th-century phenomenon. The first industrial designer is often considered to be German architect Peter Behrens, who was heavily influenced by the 19th-century English designer and poet William Morris and by the Arts and Crafts movement, with which Morris was closely associated. Beginning in 1907, Behrens was the artistic adviser for AEG (the Allgemeine Elektricitäts Gesellschaft, or Universal Electric Company), for which he designed not only industrial buildings but also small electrical appliances, from teakettles to fans. In addition, he determined the company’s corporate identity, packaging, and advertising. Behrens’s approach was an extension of what architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Karl Friedrich Schinkel long practiced: total control of a designed environment at all levels. Behrens, however, created designs for a corporate client, intent on selling a service and related goods to the public, rather than for a middle-class residential client or a royal patron, as in the cases of Wright and Schinkel, respectively.
Behrens was a leading member of the Deutscher Werkbund (founded in 1907), a society of artists, architects, and craftsmen akin to English arts-and-crafts societies. The Deutscher Werkbund catalyzed communication among German design professionals and sponsored major exhibitions, such as those in Cologne (1914) and Stuttgart (1927); the latter was the Weissenhofsiedlung, a renowned exhibition of model homes designed by Europe’s leading modern architects and the epitome of the International Style of minimalist architecture.
Behrens himself influenced many architect-designers of the next generation, including Walter Gropius, founder of Germany’s famed Bauhaus school of design, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who served as a later director of the school. Founded in 1919 in Weimar, Ger., the Bauhaus aimed to elevate and coordinate the design and production of crafts and industrial goods for a new postimperial age. Both Gropius and Mies designed buildings as well as smaller-scale objects. For instance, Gropius was the architect of the new Bauhaus building when the school moved to Dessau in 1925, but he also designed interiors of Adler automobiles (1930–33). The furnishings designed at the Bauhaus were characterized by the extensive use of bent metal, something that was developed with the assistance of the Junkers Aircraft Company in Dessau, a firm known for its early development of the all-metal airplane in 1918, at the end of World War I. Mies—who directed the Bauhaus from 1930 to 1933, when the Nazi Party came to national power and closed it—designed some renowned examples of steel-framed furniture, such as the MR chair (1927), the Barcelona chair (1929), and the Brno chair (1930). During the worldwide Great Depression of the 1930s, when he had few architectural commissions, Mies earned a living from the royalties of those furniture sales. The Bauhaus produced other icons of modern design, notably the sleek glassware and streamlined table lamps of Wilhelm Wagenfeld.
Beyond those designers specifically associated with the Bauhaus, other German architects of the time created high-profile designs; for instance, Fritz August Breuhaus de Groot created the interiors of the steamship Bremen (1929) and the airship Hindenburg (1931–35), and in the 1930s Gropius protégé Carl August Bembé designed motorboats for Maybach, a company that built internal-combustion engines for airplanes and boats and automobiles for the German car manufacturers Opel and Adler.
Early developments in industrial design were not, however, taking place solely in Germany. In the first decades of the 20th century, architects and designers in other countries were also creating distinctively designed consumer products. These include such items as the undulating Savoy vase (1936) by the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto, the avant-garde geometric porcelain teapots and cups (1923) by Russian Suprematist painter Kazimir Malevich, the classic double-lever corkscrew (1930) by Italian designer Dominick Rosati, and the ubiquitous, highly flexible Anglepoise desk lamp (1932) by the British automotive engineer George Carwardine.
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2bc3cce0e725534243f9ba4815a8825a | https://www.britannica.com/topic/industrial-espionage | Industrial espionage | Industrial espionage
Industrial espionage, acquisition of trade secrets from business competitors. A by-product of the technological revolution, industrial espionage is a reaction to the efforts of many businessmen to keep secret their designs, formulas, manufacturing processes, research, and future plans in order to protect or expand their shares of the market.
A considerable amount of data on what the competition is doing comes from routine and undramatic sources. Some large retail chains, for example, employ corps of agents to check on prices and products of competitors by comparative shopping. Equally fruitful are regular lines of communication, such as salesmen’s reports, trade magazines, newsletters, business conventions, trade fairs and exhibits, and contacts with suppliers. Analysis of competitor products is yet another source of important commercial intelligence.
Actual trade secrets may find their way into the open market through several channels. The disloyal employee may furtively seek out competitors and peddle confidential data to the highest bidder. A more common technique is the group conspiracy: several employees, usually technicians and others of high managerial calibre, leave a company and set up a competitive firm capitalizing on confidences they gained while on the payroll of their former employer. A variation of this practice occurs when a competitor lures away a valuable employee with offers of more money and benefits, in the hope that the pirated worker will make his store of secrets available to his new employer.
An employer who discovers that his trade secrets have been adopted by a competitor usually takes legal steps to prevent further invasions of his commercial privacy. The penalties against companies found guilty of usurping trade secrets may be an injunction against further use of the knowledge, an accounting and payment of all profits made from the utilization of pilfered information, or additional punitive damages if a violation of the company’s rights has been flagrant.
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3b211356643409f539561ed827b8f8c6 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/industrial-polymer-chemistry-468716/Step-growth-polymerization | Step-growth polymerization | Step-growth polymerization
Step-growth polymerization typically takes place between monomers containing functional groups that react in high yield to form new functionalities. Examples of such functional groups are carboxylic acids, which react with alcohols to form esters and with amines to form amides:
Here R and R′ represent two different organic molecular groups.
When monomers containing two of one type of functional group react with monomers containing two of another, linear polymers are formed. One commercially important example is the reaction of the dicarboxylic acid terephthalic acid (containing two CO―OH groups) with the dialcohol ethylene glycol (containing two OH groups) to form polyethylene terephthalate (PET), a polyester:
Another important reaction is that of adipic acid (containing two CO―OH groups) with 1,6-hexamethylenediamine (containing two NH2 groups) to form polyhexamethylene adipamide, also called nylon 6,6:
All the step-growth reactions outlined above yield a by-product, water. Other reactions not shown yield different by-products—for example, hydrochloric acid. Because of this loss of compounds during the polymerization process, reactions of this type are often called condensation reactions. Not all step-growth reactions are condensation reactions, however; some do not yield any by-product. One example is the reaction between benzene-1,4-diisocyanate and ethylene glycol to form a polyurethane:
Monomers containing more than two functional groups yield network polymers. An example is glyptal, a polyester formed from a reaction of phthalic anhydride with the trialcohol glycerol:
The addition polymerization reactions described above are usually exothermic—that is, they generate heat. Heat generation is seldom a problem in small-scale laboratory reactions, but on a large industrial scale it can be dangerous, since heat causes an increase in the reaction rate, and faster reactions in turn produce yet more heat. This phenomenon, called autoacceleration, can cause polymerization reactions to accelerate at explosive rates unless efficient means for heat dissipation are included in the design of the reactor.
Condensation polymerization, on the other hand, is endothermic—that is, the reaction requires an input of heat from an external source. In these cases the reactor must supply heat in order to maintain a practical reaction rate.
Reactor design must also take into account the removal or recycling of solvents and catalysts. In the case of condensation reactions, reactors must provide for the efficient removal of volatile by-products.
Polymerization on an industrial scale is conducted using five basic methods: bulk, solution, suspension, emulsion, and gas-phase.
Bulk polymerization is carried out in the absence of any solvent or dispersant and is thus the simplest in terms of formulation. It is used for most step-growth polymers and many types of chain-growth polymers. In the case of chain-growth reactions, which are generally exothermic, the heat evolved may cause the reaction to become too vigorous and difficult to control unless efficient cooling coils are installed in the reaction vessel. Bulk polymerizations are also difficult to stir because of the high viscosity associated with high-molecular-weight polymers.
The conducting of polymerization reactions in a solvent is an effective way to disperse heat; in addition, solutions are much easier to stir than bulk polymerizations. Solvents must be carefully chosen, however, so that they do not undergo chain-transfer reactions with the polymer. Because it can be difficult to remove solvent from the finished viscous polymer, solution polymerization lends itself best to polymers that are used commercially in solution form, such as certain types of adhesives and surface coatings. Polymerization of gaseous monomers is also conducted with the use of solvents, as in the production of polyethylene illustrated in Figure 6.
In suspension polymerization the monomer is dispersed in a liquid (usually water) by vigorous stirring and by the addition of stabilizers such as methyl cellulose. A monomer-soluble initiator is added in order to initiate chain-growth polymerization. Reaction heat is efficiently dispersed by the aqueous medium. The polymer is obtained in the form of granules or beads, which may be dried and packed directly for shipment.
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5d6d9d3d19107b7adb4ddbf6590f0fa6 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/industrial-polymers-468698/Butyl-rubber-isobutylene-isoprene-rubber-IIR | Butyl rubber (isobutylene-isoprene rubber, IIR) | Butyl rubber (isobutylene-isoprene rubber, IIR)
Butyl rubber is a copolymer of isobutylene and isoprene that was first produced by William Sparks and Robert Thomas at the Standard Oil Company (New Jersey) (now Exxon Corporation) in 1937. Earlier attempts to produce synthetic rubbers had involved the polymerization of dienes such as isoprene and butadiene, but Sparks and Thomas defied convention by using other starting materials. They copolymerized isobutylene, an olefin (that is, a hydrocarbon containing only one double bond in each molecule), with small amounts—e.g., less than 2 percent—of isoprene. As a diene, isoprene provided the extra double bond required to cross-link the otherwise inert polymer chains, which were essentially polyisobutylene. Before experimental difficulties were resolved, butyl rubber was called “futile butyl,” but with improvements it enjoyed wide acceptance for its low permeability to gases and its excellent resistance to oxygen and ozone at normal temperatures. During World War II the copolymer was called GR-I, for Government Rubber-Isobutylene.
IIR is produced by copolymerizing isobutylene in solution with low concentrations (1.5 to 4.5 percent) of isoprene. Both isoprene and isobutylene are usually obtained by the thermal cracking of natural gas or the lighter fractions of petroleum. The polymer repeating units have the following structures:
Because the base polymer, polyisobutylene, is stereoregular (that is, with its pendant groups arranged in a regular order along the polymer chains), and because the chains crystallize rapidly on stretching, IIR containing only a small amount of isoprene is strong like natural rubber and polychloroprene—even without carbon-black reinforcement. Butyl rubber shows an unusually low rate of molecular motion well above the glass transition temperature, probably because of restricted flexibility of the molecules. This lack of motion is reflected in the copolymer’s unusually low permeability to gases as well as its outstanding resistance to attack by ozone. IIR is relatively resistant to oxidation because there are few unsaturated groups per molecule.
Because of its excellent air retention, butyl rubber quickly replaced natural rubber as the preferred material for inner tubes in all but the largest sizes. It also plays an important part in the inner liners of tubeless tires. (All-butyl tires have not proved successful because of poor tread durability.) It is also used for many other automobile components, such as window strips, because of its resistance to oxidation. Its resistance to heat allows its application in tire manufacture, where butyl rubber forms the bladders that retain the steam or hot water used to vulcanize tires.
Bromine or chlorine can be added to the small isoprene fraction of IIR to make BIIR and CIIR (known as halobutyls). The properties of these polymers are similar to those of IIR, but they can be cured more rapidly and with different and smaller amounts of curative agents. As a result, BIIR and CIIR can be cocured more readily in contact with other elastomers making up a rubber product.
These “triblock” copolymers, also known as styrene-butadiene-styrene (SBS) and styrene-isoprene-styrene (SIS) rubber, consist of polystyrene sequences (or blocks) at each end of the chain and a butadiene or isoprene sequence in the centre. Polystyrene end-blocks of adjacent chains collect together in small “domains,” so that clusters of polystyrene are distributed through a network of butadiene or isoprene. Such a structure makes SBS and SIS into thermoplastic elastomers, blends that exhibit the elasticity and resilience of polybutadiene or polyisoprene along with the permanence of the fixed ends. (Thermoplastic elastomers are described in the article elastomer [natural and synthetic rubber].) Like all thermoplastic elastomers, SBS and SIS are less resilient than permanently interlinked molecular solids, and they do not recover as efficiently from deformation. Also, they soften and flow as the glass transition temperature of polystyrene (about 100° C, or 212° F) is approached, and they are completely dissolved (and not merely softened) by suitable liquids. Nevertheless, SBS and SIS are easily processed and reprocessed, owing to the thermoplastic properties of polystyrene, and they are remarkably strong at room temperature. They are frequently used for injection-molded parts, as hot-melt adhesives (especially in shoes), and as an additive to improve the properties of bitumen.
There are two major types of ethylene-propylene copolymers with elastomeric properties: those made with the two monomers alone and those made with small amounts (approximately 5 percent) of a diene—usually ethylidene norbornene or 1,4-hexadiene. Both copolymers are prepared in solution using Ziegler-Natta catalysts. The former are known as EPM (ethylene-propylene monomer) and the latter as EPDM (ethylene-propylene-diene monomer). The copolymers contain approximately 60 percent by weight ethylene. A pronounced advantage of EPDM is that the residual carbon-carbon double bond (i.e., the double bond that remains after polymerization) is attached to the polymer chain rather than being made part of it. Carbon-carbon double bonds are quite reactive. For example, ozone in the atmosphere adds quickly to a double bond to form an unstable product that spontaneously decomposes. Regular diene polymers, such as natural rubber or styrene-butadiene rubber, have many double bonds in the main chain, so that, when one double bond is attacked, the entire molecule is broken. EPDM, with the double bonds located in the side groups, is much less susceptible to degradation by weathering and sunlight, because any breaking of the double bonds by ozonolysis, thermal deterioration, or oxidation leaves the main chains intact. In addition, some crystallinity appears to be induced by stretching, so that even without fillers vulcanized ethylene-propylene copolymers are quite strong. However, like other hydrocarbon elastomers, the ethylene-propylene copolymers are swollen and weakened by hydrocarbon oils.
The principal uses of EPM are in automobile parts and as an impact modifier for polypropylene. EPDM is employed in flexible seals for automobiles, wire and cable insulation, weather stripping, tire sidewalls, hoses, and roofing film.
EPDM is also mixed with polypropylene to make a thermoplastic elastomer. These polymer blends, which usually contain 30 to 40 mole percent polypropylene, are rubbery solids, though they are not nearly as springy and elastic as covalently interlinked elastomers. However, owing to the thermoplastic properties of polypropylene, they can be processed and reprocessed, and they are resistant to oxidation, ozone attack, and weathering. They are therefore used in such low-severity applications as shoes, flexible covers, and sealing strips. The trademarked product Santoprene, produced by Advanced Elastomer Systems, L.P., is an example.
Some block copolymers of ethylene and propylene, called polyallomers, are marketed. Unlike EPM and EPDM, which have a relatively amorphous morphology, the polyallomers are crystalline and exhibit properties of high-impact plastics.
Styrene and maleic anhydride can be copolymerized in a bulk process using free-radical initiators to yield an alternating-block copolymer, as is illustrated schematically in Figure 3C. The copolymer repeating unit can be represented as:
In practice, most of the copolymers contain about 5 to 20 percent maleic anhydride, depending on the application, and some grades also contain small amounts of butadiene as a comonomer. The plastic is used in automobile parts, small appliances, and food-service trays.
A wide variety of heterochain polymers—that is, polymers in which the backbone contains elements such as oxygen, nitrogen, sulfur, or silicon in addition to carbon—are in commercial use. Many of these compounds are complex in structure. In this section the major heterochain polymer families are presented in alphabetic order, with important representatives of each family described in turn.
Aldehyde condensation polymers are compounds produced by the reaction of formaldehyde with phenol, urea, or melamine. The reaction is usually accompanied by the release of water and other by-products. The monomers have the following structures:
The polymerization reactions of these monomers produce complex, thermosetting network polymers with the following general structures (in which CH2 groups connected to the units are provided by the formaldehyde):
The network structure of phenol-formaldehyde resin is also illustrated in Figure 4.
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db9644c30c7d37768edf5160a56a9f04 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/industrial-polymers-468698/Polyamides | Polyamides | Polyamides
A polyamide is a polymer that contains recurring amide groups (R―CO―NH―R′) as integral parts of the main polymer chain. Synthetic polyamides are produced by a condensaton reaction between monomers, in which the linkage of the molecules occurs through the formation of the amide groups. They may be produced by the interaction of a diamine (a compound containing two amino [NH2] groups—e.g., hexamethylenediamine) and a dicarboxylic acid (containing two carboxyl [CO―OH] groups—e.g., adipic acid), or they may be formed by the self-condensation of an amino acid or an amino-acid derivative. The most important amide polymers are the nylons, an extremely versatile class of material that is an indispensable fibre and plastic. In this section the aramids, “aromatic polyamides” that contain benzene rings in their carboxylic-acid portions, are also described.
In October 1938, DuPont announced the invention of the first wholly synthetic fibre ever produced. Given the trade name Nylon (which has now become a generic term), the material was actually polyhexamethylene adipamide, also known as nylon 6,6 for the presence of six carbon atoms in each of its two monomers. Commercial production of the new fibre began in 1939 at DuPont’s plant in Seaford, Del., U.S., which in 1995 was designated a historic landmark by the American Chemical Society. Soon after the DuPont fibre was marketed, nylon 6 (polycaprolactam) was produced in Europe based on the polymerization of caprolactam. Nylon 6 and nylon 6,6 have almost the same structure and similar properties and are still the most important polyamide fibres worldwide. Their repeating units have the following structure:
Nylon 6,6 was first synthesized at DuPont in 1935 by Wallace Hume Carothers by the condensation reaction of adipic acid and 1,6-hexamethylenediamine:
As developed by Carothers, Julian Hill, and coworkers, the production process involved the use of a molecular still, which allowed polymerization to proceed more nearly to completion by eliminating water produced in the condensation reaction. Nylon arrived on the scene just in time to replace silk (a natural polyamide), whose East Asian supply sources had been cut off by imperial Japan. Women’s stockings made of the new fibre were exhibited at the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco and at the New York World’s Fair in 1939. The next year they went on sale throughout the United States, touching off a nylon mania that survived diversion of the fibre to military use during World War II and continued after the war with such intensity that nylon virtually established the synthetic-fibre industry. The high strength, elasticity, abrasion resistance, mildew resistance, lustre, dyeability, and shape-holding properties of the material made it ideal for innumerable applications in apparel, home furnishings, automobiles, and machinery. In addition, extruded and molded plastic parts made of nylon exhibited high melting points, stiffness, toughness, strength, and chemical inertness; they found immediate use as gear wheels, oil seals, bearings, and temperature-resistant packaging film.
Nylon is still a very important fibre, and its market has grown greatly since its introduction. However, it has yielded some market share to fibres of polyethylene terephthalate (see the section on Polyesters), which are cheaper to produce and display many superior properties. In apparel and home furnishings, nylon is an important fibre, especially in hosiery, lingerie, stretch fabrics and sports garments, soft-sided luggage, furniture upholstery, and carpets. (For carpeting the nylon fibre is made in large-diameter filaments.) Industrial uses of nylon fibre include automobile and truck tires, ropes, seat belts, parachutes, substrates for coated fabrics such as artificial leather, fire and garden hoses, nonwoven fabrics for carpet underlayments, and disposable garments for the health-care industry. As plastics the nylons still find employment as an engineering plastic—for example, in bearings, pulleys, gears, zippers, and automobile fan blades.
Unlike rayon and acetate, nylon fibres are melt-spun—a process described in the article man-made fibre. Other polyamides of commercial importance include nylons 4,6; 6,10; 6,12; and 12,12—each prepared from diamines and dicarboxylic acids; nylon 11, prepared by step-growth polymerization from the amino acid H2N(CH2)10COOH; and nylon 12, made by ring-opening polymerization of a cyclic amide.
Following the success of nylons, aramids (aromatic nylons) were prepared by condensation of a diamine and terephthalic acid, a carboxylic acid that contains a hexagonal benzene ring in its molecules. The close packing of the aromatic polymer chains produced a strong, tough, stiff, high-melting fibre for radial tires, heat- or flame-resistant fabrics, bulletproof clothing, and fibre-reinforced composite materials. DuPont began to produce Nomex (its trademark for poly-meta-phenylene isophthalamide) in 1961 and Kevlar (the trademarked name of poly-para-phenylene terephthalamide) in 1971. These two compounds are distinguished by the structure of their polymer chains, Kevlar containing para-oriented phenyl rings and Nomex containing meta-oriented rings:
Nomex and similar aramids marketed by other companies are generally dry-spun from the solution in which the polymer is prepared. The polymer used for Kevlar and related compounds, on the other hand, is wet-spun from a hot, high-solids solution of concentrated sulfuric acid. Because of the rodlike structure of the para-oriented aramids, a “liquid-crystalline” solution is obtained that preorients the molecules even before they are spun, leading to as-spun fibres of ultrahigh strength and ultrahigh stiffness. Kevlar, which is five times stronger per weight than steel and is best known for its use in bulletproof vests, was developed at DuPont by Stephanie Kwolek, Herbert Blades, and Paul W. Morgan. In 1978 Kwolek also produced from aramids the first polymeric liquid crystals.
Aramids are not produced in as high a volume as the commodity fibres such as nylon and polyester, but because of their high unit price they represent a large business. End uses for aramids in the home are few (Nomex-type fibres have been made into ironing-board covers), but industrial uses are increasing (especially for aramids of the Kevlar class) as designers of products learn how to exploit the properties offered by these unusual materials.
Aside from the above-mentioned bulletproof vests, Kevlar and its competitors are employed in belts for radial tires, cables, reinforced composites for aircraft panels and boat hulls, flame-resistant garments (especially in blends with Nomex), sports equipment such as golf club shafts and lightweight bicycles, and as asbestos replacements in clutches and brakes. Nomex-type fibres are made into filter bags for hot stack gases; clothes for presses that apply permanent-press finishes to fabrics; dryer belts for papermakers; insulation paper and braid for electric motors; flame-resistant protective clothing for fire fighters, military pilots, and race-car drivers; and V belts and hoses.
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b9fe2b4ad97f75b92ce004733c10fe5f | https://www.britannica.com/topic/industrial-polymers-468698/Polyesters | Polyesters | Polyesters
Polyesters are polymers made by a condensation reaction taking place between monomers in which the linkage between the molecules occurs through the formation of ester groups. The esters, which in almost all cases link an organic alcohol to a carboxylic acid, have the general structure
where R and R′ are any organic combining groups. The major industrial polyesters include polyethylene terephthalate, polycarbonate, degradable polyesters, alkyds, and unsaturated polyesters.
PET is produced by the step-growth polymerization of ethylene glycol and terephthalic acid. The presence of the large benzene rings in the repeating units
gives the polymer notable stiffness and strength, especially when the polymer chains are aligned with one another in an orderly arrangement by drawing (stretching). In this semicrystalline form, PET is made into a high-strength textile fibre marketed under such trademarked names as Dacron (DuPont) and Terylene (Imperial Chemical Industries Ltd.). The stiffness of PET fibres makes them highly resistant to deformation, so that they impart excellent resistance to wrinkling in fabrics. They are often used in durable-press blends with other fibres such as rayon, wool, and cotton, reinforcing the inherent properties of those fibres while contributing to the ability of the fabric to recover from wrinkling.
PET is also made into fibre filling for insulated clothing and for furniture and pillows. When made in very fine filaments, it is used in artificial silk, and in large-diameter filaments it is used in carpets. Among the industrial applications of PET are automobile tire yarns, conveyor belts and drive belts, reinforcement for fire and garden hoses, seat belts (an application in which it has largely replaced nylon), nonwoven fabrics for stabilizing drainage ditches, culverts, and railroad beds, and nonwovens for use as diaper top sheets and disposable medical garments. PET is the most important of the man-made fibres in weight produced and in value.
At a slightly higher molecular weight, PET is made into a high-strength plastic that can be shaped by all the common methods employed with other thermoplastics. Recording tape and magnetic film is produced by extrusion of PET film (often sold under the trademarks Mylar and Melinex). Molten PET can be blow-molded into a transparent container of high strength and rigidity that also possesses good impermeability to gas and liquid. In this form PET has become widely used in carbonated-beverage bottles and in jars for food processed at low temperatures. It is the most widely recycled plastic.
PET was first prepared in England by J. Rex Whinfield and James T. Dickson of the Calico Printers Association during a study of phthalic acid begun in 1940. Because of wartime restrictions, patent specifications for the new material, named Terylene, were not published, and production by ICI did not begin until 1954. Meanwhile, by 1945 DuPont had independently developed a practical preparation process from terephthalic acid, and in 1953 the company began to produce Dacron.
PBT, a strong and highly crystalline engineering plastic, is similar in structure to PET but has a lower melting point, so it can be processed at lower temperatures. Either unmodified or reinforced with glass fibres or mineral fillers, it is used in numerous applications, especially electrical and small machine parts, owing to its excellent electrical resistance, surface finish, and toughness. Pipe made with PBT (so-called polybutylene pipe, or PB pipe) was formerly popular for residential plumbing as a low-cost and easily handled substitute for copper, but it was found to degrade after prolonged contact with oxidizing chemicals such as chlorine in municipal water supplies, and so it is no longer used.
Marketed under the trademarked names Lexan and Merlon, among others, PC is a special type of polyester used as an engineering plastic. It has exceptional stiffness, mainly by virtue of having more aromatic rings incorporated into the polyester chain:
This structure is arrived at by reacting bisphenol A, an aromatic derivative of benzene, with phosgene, a highly reactive and toxic gas.
Polycarbonate is highly transparent, has an impact strength considerably higher than most plastics, and can be injection-molded, blow-molded, and extruded. These properties lead to its fabrication into large carboys for water, shatter-proof windows, safety shields, and safety helmets. It is the favoured plastic for injection-molding into compact discs.
Several degradable polyesters are commercially available. These include polyglycolic acid (PGA), polylactic acid (PLA), poly-2-hydroxy butyrate (PHB), and polycaprolactone (PCL), as well as their copolymers:
PGA, PLA, and PCL are prepared by acid-catalyzed ring-opening polymerization of cyclic esters. PHB, on the other hand, is made from sugars and starches by bacterial action. Degradation of the ester groups linking the monomers is brought about by microorganisms or water. Because the degradation products are natural metabolites, the polymers are of interest in medical applications. Besides being made into degradable bottles and packaging film, these compounds can find applications in controlled-release drug packaging and in absorbable surgical sutures.
Alkyds, or alkyd resins, are highly complex network polyesters that are manufactured for the paint industry. Developed from research conducted at the General Electric Co. in the 1920s, they are made from dicarboxylic acids or their anhydrides and polyfunctional alcohols such as glycerol. To the ester-forming monomers are added modifiers consisting of unsaturated oils such as tung oil, linseed oil, or dehydrated castor oil. The resulting polymers are thus branched polyesters with fatty-acid side groups. Because one of the first alcohols used to produce this type of polymer was glycerol (an alcohol derived from natural oils), the term alkyd has traditionally been used in organic coatings science to denote oil-based derivatives of polyester, while the term polyester is traditionally reserved for oil-free polyesters (described below).
When an alkyd-based coating is applied to a surface, the oil portion of the polyester undergoes a free-radical cross-linking reaction in the presence of oxygen from the surrounding air; this process, known as drying, yields a tack-free surface. (For more detailed discussion of this process, see the article surface coating.) A typical alkyd paint consists of the oil-modified polyester to form the coating film, a solvent such as hexane or mineral spirits to aid in application, metal naphthenates to catalyze the drying reaction, and pigment. A long-oil alkyd contains 60 percent fatty acid by weight, a medium-oil alkyd contains 40–60 percent fatty acid, and a short-oil alkyd contains less than 40 percent. The use of alkyds is decreasing because of difficulties in modifiying these coatings to meet regulations restricting the amount of volatile organic content (VOC) that can be released into the air. (In oil-based surface coatings, VOC is represented by the solvents.) In addition, alkyd resins tend to have lower exterior durability than many of the newer polymer systems. They retain their use in low-performance industrial coatings and interior architectural paint, however.
In order to meet VOC regulations, alkyds may be made water-reducible by the addition of free acid groups onto the molecules. In the presence of a base such as ammonia, these groups allow the polymers to be solubilized in water. Usually a cosolvent such as 2-butoxyethanol is necessary to maintain a stable solution, and under these conditions the ester linkages that are the basis of the alkyd polymer chain are vulnerable to breakage by hydrolysis. In this case special monomers are often chosen to give the chain hydrolytic stability.
As is stated above, the term polyester, when used in the context of organic surface coatings, indicates a polyester free of natural-oil modifiers. Such polyesters are used extensively in coatings. The polymer can have a linear structure, but it is often branched, and it is usually in a relatively low-molecular-weight form that can be cross-linked to form a film of high performance. When the polyester is synthesized in the presence of an excess of alcohol, it tends to have hydroxyl end-groups on the molecules, and these molecules can be cross-linked through isocyanate, epoxy, and melamine compounds that react with the hydroxyl groups. If an excess of organic acid is present during polymerization, the polyester will have carboxyl end-groups, and these can become sites for cross-linking with epoxy, melamine, and amine groups. Polyesters with free-acid groups attached to their chains can be solubilized to a water-reducible form, as is the case with alkyds. Again, the hydrolytic stability of the resultant system must be considered.
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f8715aed21432a50d27c99ea564d1f6c | https://www.britannica.com/topic/industrial-polymers-468698/Polypropylene-PP | Polypropylene (PP) | Polypropylene (PP)
This highly crystalline thermoplastic resin is built up by the chain-growth polymerization of propylene (CH2=CHCH3), a gaseous compound obtained by the thermal cracking of ethane, propane, butane, or the naphtha fraction of petroleum. The polymer repeating unit has the following structure:
Only the isotactic form of polypropylene is marketed in significant quantities. (In isotactic polypropylene, all the methyl [CH3] groups are arranged along the same side of the polymer chain.) It is produced at low temperatures and pressures using Ziegler-Natta catalysts.
Polypropylene shares some of the properties of polyethylene, but it is stiffer, has a higher melting temperature, and is slightly more oxidation-sensitive. A large proportion goes into fibres, where it is a major constituent in fabrics for home furnishings such as upholstery and indoor-outdoor carpets. Numerous industrial end uses exist for polypropylene fibre as well, including rope and cordage, disposable nonwoven fabrics for diapers and medical applications, and nonwoven fabrics for ground stabilization and reinforcement in construction and road paving. However, because of its very low moisture absorption, limited dyeability, and low softening point (an important factor when ironing clothing), polypropylene is not an important apparel fibre.
As a plastic, polypropylene is blow-molded into bottles for foods, shampoos, and other household liquids. It is also injection-molded into many products, such as appliance housings, dishwasher-proof food containers, toys, automobile battery casings, and outdoor furniture. When a thin section of molded polypropylene is flexed repeatedly, a molecular structure is formed that is capable of withstanding much additional flexing without failing. This fatigue resistance has led to the design of polypropylene boxes and other containers with self-hinged covers.
It is generally accepted that isotactic polypropylene was discovered in 1954 by the Italian chemist Giulio Natta and his assistant Paolo Chini, working in association with Montecatini (now Montedison SpA) and employing catalysts of the type recently invented by Karl Ziegler for synthesizing polyethylene. (Partly in recognition of this achievement, Natta was awarded the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1963 along with Ziegler.) Commercial production of polypropylene by Hercules Incorporated, Montecatini, and the German Farbwerke Hoechst AG began in 1957. Since the early 1980s production and consumption have increased significantly, owing to the invention of more efficient catalyst systems by Montedison and the Japanese Mitsui & Co. Ltd.
This rigid, relatively brittle thermoplastic resin is polymerized from styrene (CH2=CHC6H5). Styrene, also known as phenylethylene, is obtained by reacting ethylene with benzene in the presence of aluminum chloride to yield ethylbenzene, which is then dehydrogenated to yield clear, liquid styrene. The styrene monomer is polymerized using free-radical initiators primarily in bulk and suspension processes, although solution and emulsion methods are also employed. The structure of the polymer repeating unit can be represented as:
The presence of the pendant phenyl (C6H5) groups is key to the properties of polystyrene. These large, ring-shaped groups prevent the polymer chains from packing into close, crystalline arrangements, so that solid polystyrene is transparent. In addition, the phenyl rings restrict rotation of the chains around the carbon-carbon bonds, thus lending the polymer its noted rigidity.
The polymerization of styrene has been known since 1839, when the German pharmacist Eduard Simon reported its conversion into solid styrol, later renamed metastyrol. As late as 1930 little commercial use was found for the polymer because of brittleness and crazing (minute cracking), which were caused by impurities that brought about cross-linking of the polymer chains. By 1937 Robert Dreisbach and others at the Dow Chemical Company’s physics laboratory purified the monomer and developed a pilot-plant process for the polymer, which by 1938 was being produced commercially.
Foamed polystyrene is made into insulation, packaging, and food containers such as beverage cups, egg cartons, and disposable plates and trays. Solid polystyrene products include injection-molded eating utensils, audiocassette holders, and cases for packaging compact discs. Many foods are packaged in clear, vacuum-formed polystyrene trays, owing to the high gas permeability and good water-vapour transmission of the material.
More than half of all polystyrene produced is blended with 5 to 10 percent polybutadiene to reduce brittleness and improve impact strength. This blend is marketed as high-impact polystyrene.
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f2bbc4666cb91dace777c84e1121efcb | https://www.britannica.com/topic/industrial-polymers-468698/Unsaturated-polyesters | Unsaturated polyesters | Unsaturated polyesters
Unsaturated polyesters are linear copolymers containing carbon-carbon double bonds that are capable of undergoing further polymerization in the presence of free-radical initiators. The copolyesters are prepared from a dicarboxylic acid or its anhydride (usually phthalic anhydride) and an unsaturated dicarboxylic acid or anhydride, along with one or more dialcohols. Most commonly, maleic anhydride provides the unsaturated unit. The linear polymers are subsequently dissolved in a monomer such as styrene and are copolymerized with the styrene in a mold to form a network structure.
Glass-fibre reinforcement is almost always used in products made of unsaturated polyesters. The principal applications are boat hulls, appliances, business machines, automobile parts, automobile body patching compounds, tubs and shower stalls, flooring, translucent paneling, storage tanks, corrosion-resistant ducting, and building components.
Polyethers are polymers that are formed by the joining of monomers through ether linkages—i.e., two carbon atoms connected to an oxygen atom. A variety of polyethers are manufactured, ranging from engineering plastics to elastomers. The compounds also differ markedly in structure, though they all retain the C―O―C linkage.
Also called polyoxymethylene (POM) or simply acetal, polyacetal has the simplest structure of all the polyethers. It is manufactured in a solution process by anionic or cationic chain-growth polymerization of formaldehyde (H2C=O), a reaction analogous to vinyl polymerization. By itself, the polymer is unstable and reverts to monomer on heating to 120° C (250° F); for this reason the commercial product is reacted further with acetic anhydride to cap the ends of the chains (where depolymerization is initiated on heating) with acetate groups. The end-capped polymer is marketed by DuPont under the trademarked name of Delrin. It is a high-strength, highly crystalline engineering plastic that exhibits a low coefficient of friction and excellent resistance to oils, greases, and solvents. Also marketed is a copolymer (trademarked as Celcon by Hoechst Celanese Corp.) prepared from trioxane (a trimer of formaldehyde) and small amounts of ethylene oxide to prevent the polymer from decomposing to formaldehyde on heating.
Both polyacetal and the copolymer have been used as a replacement for metal in plumbing and automotive parts. Principal uses include appliance parts, electronics components, gears, bushings, bearings, plumbing fixtures, appliances, toys, toiletry and cosmetic articles, food-processing equipment, zippers, and belt buckles.
PPO is prepared by oxidative coupling of phenylene oxide monomer
using oxygen and a copper-based catalyst. The polymer is blended with polystyrene to produce a high-strength, moisture-resistant engineering plastic marketed by the General Electric Co. under the trademarked name of Noryl. It is used in telecommunications and computer equipment, automotive parts, appliances, pipes, and valves.
PEK and PEEK are high-strength, radiation-resistant engineering plastics whose structures combine both ether and ketone groups. Both are thermally stable and highly resistant to chemicals. Principal uses are in machine parts, nuclear power-plant equipment, automobile parts, aerospace components, cable insulation, and pump parts.
Epoxies are polyethers built up from monomers in which the ether group takes the form of a three-membered ring known as the epoxide ring:
While many variations exist, the most common epoxy resin is formed from epichlorohydrin and bisphenol A. These two monomers first form an epoxy prepolymer that retains two terminal epoxide rings:
In the above structure, n varies from about 2 to 25 repeating units; such low-molecular-weight prepolymers as these are called oligomers. Depending on their average chain length, the prepolymers vary from dense liquids to solids.
In a typical epoxy reaction, the prepolymers are further polymerized through the opening of the terminal epoxide rings by amines or anhydrides. This process, called curing, yields complex, thermosetting network polymers in which the repeating units are linked by linear ether groups. The highly polar network polymers characteristically exhibit excellent adhesive properties. In addition, because the curing reaction is easy to initiate and proceeds quite readily at room temperature, epoxy resins make very useful surface coatings. Most commonly a two-component system is used, in which one component is a low-molecular-weight polymer with amine end-groups and the other component is an epoxide-terminated polymer. The two components are mixed before application to the surface, where the polymer is allowed to cure.
Epoxy resins are also made into structural parts such as laminated circuit boards, laminates and composites for aerospace applications, and flooring. For these applications epoxies show high strength when reinforced with fibres of glass, aramid, or carbon.
The origin of epoxy resins can be traced to the early 20th century. In 1920 American plastics engineers J. MacIntosh and E.Y. Walford received patents for diepoxide plastics obtained by the reaction of epichlorohydrin with phenol or cresol. Over the following two decades the reactions were extended by other researchers to include diols such as bisphenol A. In 1937 the British chemist W.H. Moss reacted glycerin dichlorohydrin with diphenylol propane. These prepolymers, once called ethoxylenes and now called epoxy resins, were cross-linked by heating with phthalic anhydride. Under the trademarked name Araldite, epoxy resins were introduced by Ciba AG (now Ciba-Geigy AG) at the Swiss Industries Fair in 1946. Epoxies were introduced commercially as adhesives in the United States in 1947.
Polyethers of this type, which include polyethylene oxide, polypropylene oxide, and polytetrahydrofuran, are flexible and relatively noncrystalline. Because they have alcohol groups at the chain ends, they are sometimes called polyether glycols. Indeed, alternative names for the first two compounds are polyethylene glycol (PEG) and polypropylene glycol (PPG). Base-catalyzed, ring-opening polymerization is employed for ethylene and propylene oxides, while acid catalysis is used with tetrahydrofuran. Depending on molecular weight, these polyethers range from viscous liquids to waxy solids. The largest outlet for all three is in the manufacture of polyurethanes (see Polyurethanes). Other applications are lubricants, hydraulic fluids, and surfactants.
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6727d290f07d0bcc8abd808fa61ea203 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/industrial-relations/Competitive-pressures | Competitive pressures | Competitive pressures
The competitive career environment described above can lead to considerable tension and stress among middle managers. This stress is intensified by the desire of many firms to reduce not only the number of levels in the management hierarchy but also the number of middle managers.
Rapid changes in business practices, skills, and knowledge also create a strong demand for continuing education programs for middle and senior managers. Most leading business schools and many consulting firms offer various short refresher courses or short conferences to practicing managers. Many firms spend a significant amount of their training and management development resources on such programs.
In large companies that have plants or offices in many different locations, moving up the managerial hierarchy usually requires a number of geographic moves. While employers normally give a manager the option to accept or reject a geographic transfer and promotion, individuals who want to rise in their organizations tend to be reluctant to reject such offers. Yet the process of selling a house and moving one’s family to another community can be difficult, especially if both spouses have careers or their children have special needs. This tension between work and the responsibilities and priorities of family life is a growing concern in many leading companies, especially as the number of women managers and dual-career couples increases.
The long-run income prospects of a blue-collar worker are heavily dependent on the amount and quality of basic education. Failure to complete high school reduces significantly one’s expected lifetime earnings. Those who obtain post-high-school technical training through vocational schools, community colleges, or apprenticeship programs that involve both formal schooling and on-the-job experience can expect increased long-run earnings. By choosing a job that provides additional training opportunities, either on the job or through part-time outside course work, a worker further increases his or her earnings potential.
The career of blue-collar workers can be divided into four parts: initial education and entry-level training period, trial or job-matching period, stable period, and retirement. Thus, the initial career stage is one in which an individual is investing in education or, as social scientists put it, building human capital. Failure to complete high school or to acquire basic mathematical, verbal, and analytical skills not only limits long-run earnings but also increases the risk of being unemployed for longer periods than for those who invested more time and energy in this period of education and training.
In searching for a job, blue-collar workers tend to rely heavily on informal contacts and information provided by friends, family members, or school advisers. Following the completion of schooling and entry-level training, most workers experience a trial period in which they change jobs a number of times in search of a good match between their abilities and aspirations and the opportunities available to them. The average U.S. worker changes jobs six to eight times before settling into a stable employment relationship, while the average worker in Europe and Japan will hold many fewer jobs over a career. (The relative stability in Japanese and European employment patterns may, however, be disappearing.) Some of this job movement may be involuntary, because many firms follow a seniority rule in laying off workers (that is, the most junior workers are laid off first).
Blue-collar workers generally experience their most stable period of employment between the ages of 30 and 60. As family responsibilities expand and seniority on the job increases, the likelihood of staying with a given firm also becomes greater. The potential costs of a job change or a job loss also tend to mount over time, as it becomes harder to find a job with another company that can match the level of wages and benefits often achieved after years of service and internal promotion.
Workers face new choices as they approach the retirement stage of their careers. A recent trend can be illustrated with an example from the United States: although American firms are no longer allowed to impose a mandatory retirement age, few blue-collar workers choose to stay at the job beyond the customary retirement age of 65. Instead, an increasing number of workers retire and then take part-time jobs. This trend may be caused by the early retirement incentives many firms offer to employees. The practice has also contributed to the growing number of older workers who are employed on a part-time basis.
Along with the stages in workers’ careers go shifting attitudes toward their jobs. When workers remain with the same company, their outlook on the job and the company tends to follow a curvilinear pattern: high at first, then dropping through the middle period, and rising in the later parts of their career. Individuals tend to begin work with such unrealistically high expectations as to the nature of the jobs and the opportunities before them that disillusionment later sets in; but after some years they adjust themselves, lower their expectations, and express more satisfaction with the work situation.
Interest in joining a union or in becoming a leader in the union tends to follow a reverse curvilinear path. Interest is low at the beginning of tenure with a company because of the uncertainty over how long the worker will stay with the firm and because satisfaction with a new job is generally high. Over time job satisfaction may decline, accompanied by an increased interest in changing work-related conditions. Only as retirement approaches and the costs of leaving the firm become untenable does job satisfaction again rise, thereby lowering the worker’s tendency to participate in aggressive efforts—such as union organization—to change the work situation.
A number of studies have shown that few blue-collar workers want to leave their community when a production plant or office shuts down. Ties with friends and family make workers reluctant to leave. They may also find that housing costs are much higher in communities where job opportunities are plentiful. Blue-collar workers and their families are therefore likely to conclude that it is best to stay where they are in the hope that the local job market will pick up.
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fb3340f86d4525cf4c3fd6388d4c6c1b | https://www.britannica.com/topic/industrial-relations/The-work-careers-of-service-workers-and-technical-professionals | The work careers of service workers and technical professionals | The work careers of service workers and technical professionals
Most research on the careers and expectations of workers comes from blue- and white-collar workers employed in manufacturing industries. Yet the manufacturing sector is shrinking in comparison with the service sector. In most advanced industrialized economies, more than half of private-sector workers are employed in services, compared with approximately 20 percent in manufacturing.
It is difficult to make generalizations about the nature of service-sector employment and careers, as the jobs vary widely. For example, while average wages in service-sector jobs are lower than average wages in manufacturing, the wage differential between the best and the worst jobs in services is also larger than the comparable differential in manufacturing. This greater inequality of income (and skill requirements) helps explain why workers who are displaced from manufacturing jobs experience, on average, significant pay cuts when they take new jobs in the service sector. The best predictor of the size of the difference in pay between the job lost and the new job is the amount of education and transferable training the worker possesses. Again, education and training are critical not only to income but also to job security and career advancement.
Service-sector jobs differ in several other important dimensions. First, the ratio of women to men in service jobs is much higher than in manufacturing. Second, service firms employ a relatively large and growing number of part-time workers; some work part-time by choice, while others move to a full-time job only when and if one is available. Third, low-paid service jobs tend to have high rates of turnover and lack many of the fringe benefits, training opportunities, seniority rules, and union protections found in the more stable and better-paying manufacturing jobs; this is not the case, however, for high-paying professional service and public-sector jobs. Finally, service firms tend to be smaller in size and more vulnerable to changes in market or technological developments outside the control of their owners. For all of these reasons, the shift in the labour base from manufacturing to services has engendered vigorous debate over the ability of these new jobs to meet the high and ever-expanding expectations of the work force.
The first research in industrial relations focused on blue-collar workers. Gradually attention spread to foremen and then to higher levels of management. Considerable attention has also been devoted to the study of scientists and engineers who work in industrial organizations. Interest in such technical professionals reflects the importance organizations attach to the development and use of new scientific discoveries and technologies. How well these technical professionals—and the research and development processes they engage in—are managed can have substantial effects on the long-run profitability of a firm and on the competitiveness of the larger economy.
Scientists or engineers are often thought of as solitary individuals who work in a laboratory on some abstract problem or idea. While this may accurately represent a relatively small number of scientists who work on basic research, the vast majority of technical professionals in organizations actually work together in teams or project groups on applied research and development tasks. Their primary role is to transfer new scientific discoveries or ideas from the laboratory to manufacturing and out to the marketplace by creating new products or technologies. These company-wide project teams often include specialists in marketing, manufacturing, and human resources management as well as representatives of various scientific disciplines or technical specialties.
What do technical professionals want from their jobs and careers? Like all other workers, scientists and engineers are concerned about their employment security and long-term career opportunities, especially because their job security can depend on winning contracts from customers or on obtaining budget funds from top managers. This uncertainty leads some firms to try to keep their permanent research and development staffs rather small; additional engineers or technicians are hired as consultants on a contract-by-contract basis.
Like other professionals, scientists and engineers also want to gain the respect of peers in their field of work. Recognition of this desire led many early researchers to speculate that these professionals were more interested in contributing to science than they were in meeting the needs of their particular employer. Later research showed, however, that most technical professionals also want to work on problems that are critical to the success of the firm. They want to understand the firm’s goals and be given an opportunity to help meet them. Above all else they seek important and challenging projects that are accompanied by the resources, influence, and autonomy needed to complete the projects successfully.
Not all technical professionals want to remain in technical jobs throughout their careers. Some aspire to move into management; others want to continue to do technical work but want the status and economic rewards that normally come with promotions to higher management. This has led many organizations to establish a dual-ladder, or dual-track, progression system. Individuals in mid-career can seek promotions to more senior assignments on the technical ladder or to administrative positions on the management ladder. In theory the steps on each ladder are supposed to provide equivalent economic rewards, influence, and status. In practice, however, the management track usually provides broader exposure within the organization and thus better access to senior executive positions. Experience has shown that dual-ladder systems are extremely hard to administer.
In the past, research and development work was organized in a linear fashion, with a project passing from one group of specialists to another until it was ready to be given to the manufacturing section. The metaphor of “throwing it over the wall” was often used to describe this mode of organization, signifying both the serial and the isolated nature of each stage of the process. Research evidence convinced most organizations that this was very inefficient and time-consuming, and firms now encourage more cross-functional communication and participation by bringing together teams of representatives from each stage of the development process. The goal is to coordinate the process better and to identify and avoid problems that otherwise might be discovered only at a later stage. Specific management techniques—such as quality circles (small, project-oriented teams comprising representatives from all relevant areas of the company)—reflect one way organizations attempt to improve communication and increase productivity.
To work effectively in these cross-functional project teams, scientists and engineers must have both up-to-date knowledge of their technical disciplines and skill in the communication, problem-solving, and group decision-making processes essential for successful teamwork. Universities have developed curricula to teach these skills, while organizations reinforce them through their career-development paths and reward systems.
One key to the success of the research and development process is the project leader, who must motivate, lead, and coordinate team members. At the same time, the leader must represent the group’s interests in the larger organization by serving as an advocate for the team’s project and by winning the support and resources needed to get the job done. In the end, it is the project leader who is responsible for keeping the project on schedule and within budget.
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d817c29572c3a5106e55a285c3824d89 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/industrial-union | Industrial union | Industrial union
Industrial union, trade union that combines all workers, both skilled and unskilled, who are employed in a particular industry. At the heart of industrial unionism is the slogan “one shop, one union.”
Excluded from the early unions of skilled craftsmen, the semiskilled and unskilled workers in the mass-production industries began organizing in Britain about the end of the 19th century; similar developments occurred a little later in other countries. In their struggle for recognition, the new unions tended to employ tactics that were more aggressive than those used by the craft unions. Unlike the latter, trade unions could not rely on the scarcity of workers as leverage in negotiations. Instead, they gained recognition and success by organizing large numbers of unskilled workers. In the United States, one of the most enduring federations of such unions, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), began in 1935. Unlike the American Federation of Labor (AFL)—which had ignored the new industries that employed thousands of unskilled or semiskilled workers—the CIO organized these industrial workers through sit-down strikes and walkouts. Employers often could not realistically hope to replace thousands of workers without loss of production and thus consented to negotiate labour agreements.
Today few unions are organized uniquely on a craft or industrial basis. Instead, large industrial unions may set up special divisions for particular occupational groups within their jurisdictions, and craft unions may become industrial as they organize additional nonskilled workers in new industries.
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fbefe2dba891c6dfe70d39f4ccd4c1a8 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ines-of-My-Soul | Inés of My Soul | Inés of My Soul
…Inés del alma mía (2006; Inés of My Soul) tells the fictionalized story of Inés Suárez, the mistress of conquistador Pedro de Valdivia. La isla bajo el mar (2009; The Island Beneath the Sea) uses the 1791 slave revolt in Haiti as a backdrop for a story about a mulatto…
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b4e74adb7098fb13ed18a1658fd18674 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/inference-schema | Inference schema | Inference schema
…above may be called an inference form, and (1) and (2) are then instances of that inference form. The letters—X, Y, and Z—in (3) mark the places into which expressions of a certain type may be inserted. Symbols used for this purpose are known as variables; their use is analogous…
Chrysippus regarded five valid inference schemata as basic or indemonstrable. They are:
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43f599e0df13d1d5829cdd44801a74ec | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Inferno | Inferno | Inferno
Divided into three major sections—Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso—the narrative traces the journey of Dante from darkness and error to the revelation of the divine light, culminating in the Beatific Vision of God.
…into three sections, or canticles, Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. Technically there are 33 cantos in each canticle and one additional canto, contained in the Inferno, which serves as an introduction to the entire poem. For the most part the cantos range from about 136 to about 151 lines. The poem’s…
…folio Bible (1866), and the Inferno of Dante (1861). He also painted many large compositions of a religious or historical character and had some success as a sculptor; his work in those media, however, lacks the spontaneous vivacity of his illustrations.
…three cantiche, or narrative sections: Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. Each section contains 33 cantos, though the Inferno has one more (34), since the very first canto serves as a prologue to the entire work. Dante, through his experiences and encounters on the journey, gains understanding of the gradations of damnation,…
…is his intercessor in the Inferno, his goal in traveling through Purgatorio, and his guide through Paradiso. At first sight of her, in Purgatorio, he is as overwhelmed as he was at the age of nine, and he is dazzled by her presence throughout the journey, until she ascends again…
His verse translation of Dante’s Inferno (1994) is notable for its gracefulness and its faithfulness to the original terza rima form. In addition to editing several poetry anthologies, Pinsky devised and published an interactive quest romance called Mindwheel to be played on computers. In 1997 he was elected to the…
He is represented in Dante’s Inferno, in which he carries his severed head before him like a lantern and is compared with the biblical Achitophel, who also incited royal sons against their father (David).
…in Canto V of the Inferno he encounters the lovers Francesca and Paolo on the second circle. Their love and death have also been celebrated in plays by Silvio Pellico and Gabriele D’Annunzio, in operas by Hermann Götz and Sergey Rachmaninoff, and by many other writers, painters, and composers.
…commemorated these events in the Inferno, the first part of his great work The Divine Comedy.
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bc69e66cfebd36406d6e8ccce654c50d | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Infinite-Jest | Infinite Jest | Infinite Jest
including David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest (1996), an encyclopaedic mixture of arcane lore, social fiction, and postmodern irony; Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections (2001, National Book Award) and Freedom (2010), both family portraits; and Don DeLillo’s Underworld (1997), a brooding, resonant, oblique account of the Cold War
…known for his second novel, Infinite Jest (1996), a massive, multilayered novel that he wrote over the course of four years. In it appear a sweeping cast of postmodern characters that range from recovering alcoholics and foreign statesmen to residents of a halfway house and high-school tennis stars. Presenting a…
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5788cd4ace08674a399ff292ac0ba00a | https://www.britannica.com/topic/informant | Informant | Informant
…relationships with individuals, known as informants, who can provide specific information on ritual, kinship, or other significant aspects of cultural life. In this process also the anthropologist risks the danger of biased viewpoints, as those who most willingly act as informants frequently are individuals who are marginal to the group…
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3ca60bc7cabe32b931bb9da989c1041f | https://www.britannica.com/topic/information-system | Information system | Information system
Information system, an integrated set of components for collecting, storing, and processing data and for providing information, knowledge, and digital products. Business firms and other organizations rely on information systems to carry out and manage their operations, interact with their customers and suppliers, and compete in the marketplace. Information systems are used to run interorganizational supply chains and electronic markets. For instance, corporations use information systems to process financial accounts, to manage their human resources, and to reach their potential customers with online promotions. Many major companies are built entirely around information systems. These include eBay, a largely auction marketplace; Amazon, an expanding electronic mall and provider of cloud computing services; Alibaba, a business-to-business e-marketplace; and Google, a search engine company that derives most of its revenue from keyword advertising on Internet searches. Governments deploy information systems to provide services cost-effectively to citizens. Digital goods—such as electronic books, video products, and software—and online services, such as gaming and social networking, are delivered with information systems. Individuals rely on information systems, generally Internet-based, for conducting much of their personal lives: for socializing, study, shopping, banking, and entertainment.
As major new technologies for recording and processing information were invented over the millennia, new capabilities appeared, and people became empowered. The invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in the mid-15th century and the invention of a mechanical calculator by Blaise Pascal in the 17th century are but two examples. These inventions led to a profound revolution in the ability to record, process, disseminate, and reach for information and knowledge. This led, in turn, to even deeper changes in individual lives, business organization, and human governance.
The first large-scale mechanical information system was Herman Hollerith’s census tabulator. Invented in time to process the 1890 U.S. census, Hollerith’s machine represented a major step in automation, as well as an inspiration to develop computerized information systems.
One of the first computers used for such information processing was the UNIVAC I, installed at the U.S. Bureau of the Census in 1951 for administrative use and at General Electric in 1954 for commercial use. Beginning in the late 1970s, personal computers brought some of the advantages of information systems to small businesses and to individuals. Early in the same decade the Internet began its expansion as the global network of networks. In 1991 the World Wide Web, invented by Tim Berners-Lee as a means to access the interlinked information stored in the globally dispersed computers connected by the Internet, began operation and became the principal service delivered on the network. The global penetration of the Internet and the Web has enabled access to information and other resources and facilitated the forming of relationships among people and organizations on an unprecedented scale. The progress of electronic commerce over the Internet has resulted in a dramatic growth in digital interpersonal communications (via e-mail and social networks), distribution of products (software, music, e-books, and movies), and business transactions (buying, selling, and advertising on the Web). With the worldwide spread of smartphones, tablets, laptops, and other computer-based mobile devices, all of which are connected by wireless communication networks, information systems have been extended to support mobility as the natural human condition.
As information systems enabled more diverse human activities, they exerted a profound influence over society. These systems quickened the pace of daily activities, enabled people to develop and maintain new and often more-rewarding relationships, affected the structure and mix of organizations, changed the type of products bought, and influenced the nature of work. Information and knowledge became vital economic resources. Yet, along with new opportunities, the dependence on information systems brought new threats. Intensive industry innovation and academic research continually develop new opportunities while aiming to contain the threats.
The main components of information systems are computer hardware and software, telecommunications, databases and data warehouses, human resources, and procedures. The hardware, software, and telecommunications constitute information technology (IT), which is now ingrained in the operations and management of organizations.
Today throughout the world even the smallest firms, as well as many households, own or lease computers. Individuals may own multiple computers in the form of smartphones, tablets, and other wearable devices. Large organizations typically employ distributed computer systems, from powerful parallel-processing servers located in data centres to widely dispersed personal computers and mobile devices, integrated into the organizational information systems. Sensors are becoming ever more widely distributed throughout the physical and biological environment to gather data and, in many cases, to effect control via devices known as actuators. Together with the peripheral equipment—such as magnetic or solid-state storage disks, input-output devices, and telecommunications gear—these constitute the hardware of information systems. The cost of hardware has steadily and rapidly decreased, while processing speed and storage capacity have increased vastly. This development has been occurring under Moore’s law: the power of the microprocessors at the heart of computing devices has been doubling approximately every 18 to 24 months. However, hardware’s use of electric power and its environmental impact are concerns being addressed by designers. Increasingly, computer and storage services are delivered from the cloud—from shared facilities accessed over telecommunications networks.
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83c56f40df4b9efe45d0d2ef11e0cc1b | https://www.britannica.com/topic/infotainment | Infotainment | Infotainment
Infotainment, television programming that presents information (as news) in a manner intended to be entertaining. Infotainment came about through the blurring of the line between information and entertainment in news and current affairs programming, whether in the selection of news stories (e.g., more emphasis on celebrity gossip, crime stories, and human-interest pieces) or in their presentation (stylistically, through flashy graphics, fast-paced editing, music, and sound effects, as well as in terms of tone and approach, through the use sensationalism or satire).
The media environment in the United States and around the world underwent dramatic changes beginning in the late 1970s and early ’80s. Not only did technological innovations change the way people consume various media, but the structure of the industry changed as well. The growing conglomerations of media companies, as well as the proliferation of cable channels, led to a dramatic increase not only in the amount of information available but also in competition for audiences. As the Internet increasingly pervaded daily life, newspaper readership declined significantly, as did the viewership of the major broadcast network news programs. As audiences turned to Internet-based news sources, media companies searched for ways to maintain if not expand their audience shares while increasing advertising revenues. News divisions of media companies, once treated by management as insulated from market pressures, began considering additional sources of revenue. These economic challenges helped blur the news-entertainment distinction as news producers increasingly relied on entertainment value to “sell” news stories.
Historically, news organizations maintained a distinction between “hard” news and entertainment, or “soft” news, programming. In the 1980s, communications theorists began to use the term infotainment (a portmanteau of information and entertainment) as a synonym for soft news. Hard news was generally defined as breaking developments involving major leaders or issues, public policy, or disruptions of daily life such as natural disasters or calamities. Soft news was less institutional as well as more personal and immediate in nature, with an emphasis on human-interest themes. Often infotainment was simply the mixture of market forces and journalistic practices as both local and national news outlets sought to hold onto their audiences in a rapidly changing media landscape.
Infotainment came to include daytime television shows such as The Oprah Winfrey Show (later Oprah; 1986–2011), entertainment news programs such as Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood, and talking-head forums such as Hannity and Colmes (1996–2009; featuring Sean Hannity), The O’Reilly Factor (with Bill O’Reilly), and The Rachel Maddow Show, whose hosts and host networks (especially the Fox News Channel and MSNBC) belied pronounced political biases. These types of programs convey political and public affairs information through humour, discussion panels, and feature stories and try to do so in an entertaining, eye-catching manner. So, too, do such news magazines as the National Broadcasting Co., Inc.’s Dateline, the CBS Corporation’s 60 Minutes, and the American Broadcasting Company’s 20/20.
Among the most-popular infotainment programs of the first two decades of the 21st century was The Daily Show, a so-called fake news show that satirized media, politics, and pop culture. The Daily Show first aired in 1996 on the Comedy Central network, but it did not become a cultural force until Jon Stewart became its host in 1999. During the 2000 U.S. presidential campaign, its satiric and comprehensive “Indecision 2000” coverage—featuring The Daily Show correspondents reporting from the caucuses and national conventions—became so popular that on election night its viewership rivaled that of some traditional news programs. Indeed, many prominent politicians, journalists, and pundits began to appear on the show to discuss current affairs (and exchange jokes) with Stewart. The program also launched the careers of many of its correspondents, including Stephen Colbert, who took on the guise of a conservative pundit on The Colbert Report, which parodied the talking-head opinion format. In Canada the Rick Mercer Report, hosted by Rick Mercer, satirized Canadian politics and culture in Daily Show-like fashion.
Some media critics argue that by providing content in this manner, media are failing the public as a source of reliable information necessary to the democratic process. Others suggest that soft news and infotainment might actually be good for consumers by attracting viewers normally not interested in political programming. By “piggybacking” information about foreign policy and politics onto entertainment-oriented programs, these normally inattentive soft news consumers may actually gain information.
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55f01e84dd2ccc2f483007212a6046d4 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Inguri-Dam | Inguri Dam | Inguri Dam
Inguri Dam, world’s highest arch dam (completed 1980), located on the Inguri River in western Georgia near the point at which the river leaves the Caucasus Mountains on its way to the Black Sea. It is a huge 892-foot- (272-metre-) tall double-curvature arch dam with a crest length of 2,231 feet (680 m). The dam was built of interlocking stacks of concrete monoliths laid over reinforced limestone bedrock. The five-unit power plant associated with the dam has a planned power capacity of 1,300 megawatts.
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5e1cf690ff92d525322444fbe20d80c8 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ingush | Ingush | Ingush
…such as the Chechen and Ingush, from 1944 onward. They were accused of collaborating with the Germans. The Volga Germans were deported in the autumn of 1941 lest they side with the advancing Wehrmacht. Altogether, more than 50 nationalities, embracing about 3.5 million people, were deported to various parts of…
…with minorities of Russians and Ingush. The Chechens and the Ingush are both Muslim and are two of the many Caucasian mountain peoples whose language belongs to the Nakh group. Fiercely independent, the Chechens and other Caucasian tribes mounted a prolonged resistance to Russian conquest from the 1830s through the…
…majority of the population is Ingush, one of the many Muslim mountain peoples in the Caucasus. Traditionally, the chief occupations were farming in the lowlands and cattle raising in the mountain areas. Mineral water is of economic importance, and the republic has a growing tourism sector.
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c73c54df8f442a7686ced9aebf76e318 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/inheritance-law/Limits-on-freedom-of-testation | Limits on freedom of testation | Limits on freedom of testation
Freedom of testation has never been absolutely unlimited. Nowhere is a testamentary provision valid if its enforcement would be shocking to public morals. When a testamentary gift is conditioned upon an act of the beneficiary that in good morals should not be so conditioned, as, for instance, a gift conditioned upon the beneficiary’s obtaining a divorce, the gift is either invalid or valid without conditions. Generally, property given by testament cannot be tied up by the testator for an indefinite future. Under the rule against perpetuities, as developed in England and commonly applied in the United States, a testator may leave property to a person for life and upon the first taker’s death to some other person; but the last “remainder” must “vest” not later than, roughly speaking, one generation after the testator’s death or, in England, since the Perpetuities and Accumulation Act of 1964, a fixed period of years up to 80. In the civil-law countries of the German system, the freedom to provide for substitutions is limited in similar ways, but in those of the French system it is limited much more strictly.
A testator’s freedom to disinherit a surviving spouse, children, or other heirs has been more extensive in ancient Roman and modern Anglo-American law than in the modern civil-law countries, but it has always had limits. In republican Rome a testator had the power to disinherit a spouse and children, but if he wished to do this he had to say so expressly in the will. In the period of the principate, it became necessary to state the reasons, because a will disinheriting a close member of the family without reasonable and honest cause was in danger of being declared invalid. In the late Roman Empire the descendants—and if there were no descendants, the ascendants (e.g., parents)—were given the right to a share in the estate (pars legitima), of which none of them could be deprived except upon serious cause stated in the will. When, after the fall of the Roman Empire, testamentary disposition came to be recognized again in the later Middle Ages, custom generally required that some minimum share, frequently one-third, be left to the surviving spouse, or the descendants, or both. Upon the revival of Roman law on the European continent and in Scotland, these customs were in various ways combined with the rules of the Corpus Juris.
In the modern civil law, two systems are used to provide protection against disinheritance. Under the French system, a testator who is survived by descendants, parents, or (in some countries) brothers, sisters, or even other close relatives, cannot dispose at all of the “reserved portion” of his estate, the size of which depends upon the number and the degree of nearness of relationship of the surviving “forced heirs.” Under the civil code of France, for instance, donations inter vivos or by last will cannot exceed one-half of the property of the disposer, if he leaves at his decease one child; one-third, if he leaves two children; and one-fourth, if he leaves three or a greater number. The indisposable share is one-half of the property if the disposer, having no children, leaves ascendants of both his father’s and his mother’s lines and three-quarters if he leaves ascendants in only one line. Under the German pattern, the surviving spouse, a descendant, or, if there are no descendants, a parent can claim to be paid in money one-half the value of the share that would have been his in the case of intestate succession.
In England those customs that required a minimum share in the personal property to be left to the surviving spouse and descendants disappeared in the 17th and 18th centuries. The interest of dower, which guaranteed a life estate to the widow in one-third of each parcel of the real estate of the predeceased husband, lost its protective effect in 1833. At the turn of the 20th century, freedom of disinheritance was complete in England as well as in the dominions but not in Scotland. There, in the movable estate, the legitim (bairn’s part) is still reserved to the children, the ius relicti to the widower, and the ius relictae to the widow. Until 1964 (in immovables) the widower was entitled to curtesy, a life rent in his wife’s heritage (i.e., immovable) property, and the widow had the right of terce—i.e., a life rent out of one-third of her husband’s inheritable estate. In England, freedom of testation, while unlimited by law, was kept within narrow limits by the custom among wealthy families of preventing the splitting up or alienation of the family wealth by means of a so-called strict settlement. In each generation, the head of the family would settle the estate upon the eldest son in such a way that it would descend to him undivided but subject to a generous life estate for the widow and to provisions for the daughters, younger sons, and other needy relatives.
In the different social climate of New Zealand, a new device for protecting needy family members against disinheritance was invented with the enactment, in 1900, of a statute that empowers the court to order adequate provision for the maintenance of a spouse or a needy child out of the estate of any testator who has not made such provision. Family provision acts of this kind have since been enacted in Australia, Canada, and England.
Under the English Inheritance (Family Provision) Act of 1938, as amended in a series of enactments, the court, if it found the decedent had failed to make reasonable financial provision for the applicant, was empowered to order maintenance from the estate to the surviving spouse, an unmarried daughter, a minor son, any incapacitated child, or an unmarried former spouse of the decedent. The scope of this system of discretionary financial provision was extended by the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependents) Act of 1975. Under that act, the standard for provision for a surviving spouse is no longer limited to maintenance but is a reasonable share of the deceased’s estate. The class of applicants has been widened to include any person treated by the deceased as a child of the family and any person who was being wholly or partly maintained by the deceased immediately before his death.
In the United States the surviving spouse is protected against complete disinheritance in every state through one or more of the following devices: dower, indefeasible share, community property, homestead, or family allowances. The most widespread is the indefeasible share, which guarantees to the surviving spouse a certain portion, usually expressed in terms of a fixed dollar amount plus a fraction or, under older statutes, as just a fraction, of the decedent’s estate. The weakness of this system, however, is that the indefeasible share can be diminished or wiped out if the decedent has given away most or all of his property before his death. A number of states have tried to remedy this difficulty by permitting the surviving spouse’s rights to be asserted against certain inter vivos transfers.
In many states the indefeasible share system exists alongside a modernized version of the old common-law estates of dower and curtesy, which have now been generally assimilated to each other under the single heading of dower. Under some statutes each spouse’s dower rights attach upon marriage to any real estate owned by the other spouse and upon acquisition to any real estate acquired by the other spouse during the marriage. These rights cannot be affected during the marriage by any transaction of the owner-spouse without the other’s consent. Upon the death of the owner-spouse, dower entitles the surviving spouse to a life estate in all or part of the real estate of the predeceasing spouse. Dower has long ceased to be the major device for protecting a surviving spouse against disinheritance because it applies only to real estate and thus offers no security at all in the situation where the wealth of the predeceasing spouse was only or mainly composed of personal property such as savings or shares of stock. A further reason for the decline of dower is that a system of marital rights in real estate that cannot be defeated by sale, gift, mortgage, or will of the owner-spouse came to be seen as a clog on marketability and a threat to the security of titles. Thus, several states have followed the example of England and have abolished dower altogether, while a number of others have redefined dower as an interest that attaches only to whatever real estate is left upon the death of the predeceasing spouse.
In those U.S. jurisdictions that have adopted the so-called community-property system, an indefeasible share in the family wealth is secured to the surviving spouse by his or her being entitled to one-half of the community property, which generally consists of the property acquired during the marriage by the gainful activities of either spouse. Varying systems of community property also exist in numerous European and Latin-American countries. In the countries of the French system, community-property law applies unless it has been expressly contracted out by the parties to the marriage. Under the Scandinavian system, the assets of husband and wife remain separate during marriage but upon the termination of the marriage are distributed between them. Protection of the surviving spouse can, furthermore, be achieved through homestead laws and family allowance laws that guarantee to the widow or the widower an award of income payable out of the estate for a few months immediately following the death of the other spouse.
The only jurisdictions in the United States that protect descendants against disinheritance by giving them indefeasible shares are Louisiana and Puerto Rico, whose legal systems are not derived from the common law. In the other states the descendants are protected either not at all or only indirectly and incompletely by (1) “pretermitted heir” statutes, which, like early Roman law, require the testator to state the disinheritance of a descendant expressly in the will, or (2) “afterborn heir” statutes, under which a child born after the making of the will receives his intestate share unless a contrary intention is stated in the will, or (3) “charity begins at home statutes,” under which no more than a certain fraction (e.g., one-half) of the estate may be given to charity by a testator who is survived by certain close relatives, or (4) “hellfire statutes,” which declare ineffective a testamentary provision for charitable purpose made by the testator upon his deathbed, in his last illness, or within a fixed period immediately preceding his death.
In the Soviet Union a compulsory share of one-third of the decedent’s intestate share was guaranteed to his minor children and to any of the following who were unable to work: the decedent’s children, spouse, parents, and those who had been dependent on him.
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5c5b5b47357746af2a8b847d31dae7ab | https://www.britannica.com/topic/inheritance-law/Rights-of-spouses | Rights of spouses | Rights of spouses
There is also a widespread trend toward improvement of the successoral position of the surviving spouse, often even favouring the spouse above the decedent’s blood relatives. Benefits for a surviving spouse can, of course, be achieved by devices other than rights of inheritance. A method of great antiquity is the giving of a dowry, meant to sustain a woman after the death of her husband. In societies in which dowries are customary, the “poor widow” who lacks a dowry can then be helped by an exceptional right to a share in the estate, as was provided in Justinian’s reform of the Roman law; this provision still exists in the state of Louisiana for the widow or the widower. A widow may be given a claim for support out of the estate, as in Austria (and in France between 1891 and 1925). Such support may even be provided for a wider circle of persons dependent upon the decedent, as in the family provision laws of England, New Zealand, and other Commonwealth countries.
Benefits for a surviving spouse can also be provided through some system of community property, as found in numerous civil-law countries and in some states of the United States. The community fund may consist of the acquests made during marriage through the exertions of either spouse or, additionally, of the movable assets owned by either spouse at the initiation of the marriage or even of all property owned by the spouses. Upon one spouse’s death, the fund is split into halves. One half constitutes the survivor’s share in the community and thus belongs to him, whereas the estate of the predeceasing spouse consists of the other half of the community, along with such assets as the predeceasing spouse may have owned as his separate fund. The law may or may not then grant the surviving spouse an intestate share of the estate. Still another way of providing benefits for a surviving spouse is to give him a life estate in certain assets of the predeceasing spouse, as is done in the common-law institutions of dower and curtesy. French law, under certain circumstances, gives the surviving spouse a share in the estate or in a fraction of it.
Of great and increasing practical importance are the rights to pensions, social security benefits, and damage claims arising from the death of a married person, which are now universally available to a surviving spouse. Improvements in the right of a surviving spouse to share in the married couple’s capital have been brought about in France, England, and numerous U.S. jurisdictions by giving him a preferred position in the scheme of intestate succession or, as in Scandinavia, by giving the surviving spouse a share in the acquests made during marriage by the exertions of both spouses or, as was developed in the Federal Republic of Germany, by a combination of both devices. This revalorization of the surviving spouse is the consequence of several factors, including the weakening of family ties, the decreasing importance of inherited wealth, and the diminishing willingness of children and aged parents to share the same household. In addition, the feeling has grown that a wife who stays at home to run the household and bring up the children, instead of going out and earning a living of her own, enables her husband to act as the breadwinner and is therefore entitled to a share in his accumulated earnings.
Intestacy laws vary widely in detail. The principal features of the intestacy rules of England, the U.S. state of New York, the U.S. Uniform Probate Code, France, and the former Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic are presented below.
The complex provisions of the Administration of Estates Act of 1925, as amended by the Intestates’ Estates Act of 1952 and the family provision legislation (see above), are based on the following scheme:
1. The relatives of the decedent are grouped in seven classes. No member of a class takes in intestacy as long as any member of a preceding class has survived the decedent. The classes are (a) descendants per stirpes, (b) parents, (c) brothers and sisters of the full blood, a deceased brother or sister being represented by his descendants per stirpes, (d) brothers and sisters of the half blood, such a deceased brother or sister being represented by his descendants per stirpes, (e) grandparents, (f) parents’ brothers and sisters of the full blood, and (g) parents’ brothers and sisters of the half blood.
2. A surviving spouse takes, if the decedent is survived by descendants, the “personal chattels”—i.e., the assets of the household—£75,000 (£125,000 if the estate is worth more than £125,000), and a life estate in one-half of the remaining part of the estate. If the decedent is not survived by descendants but is survived by parents or by brothers and sisters of the full blood or by descendants of such brothers and sisters, the surviving spouse takes the personal chattels, £125,000, and one-half of the remaining part of the estate. If the decedent is not survived by any of the above, the surviving spouse takes all.
If the intestate share of the surviving spouse, or of any person enumerated in the Inheritance Act of 1975 (see above Limits on freedom of testation), is insufficient to provide reasonable maintenance, the court may order that provision for such persons be made out of the estate.
Under the New York Estates, Powers and Trusts Law of 1966, as amended, relatives, grouped under the parentelic system, take by intestacy up to, but not beyond, the parentela of the grandparents. In the first and second parentelas, distribution is per stirpes; in the third, it is per capita among persons standing in the same grade. If the decedent is survived by at least one child or the issue of at least one child, the surviving spouse takes $50,000 in money or intangible personal property and one-half of the residue; if no children or their issue survive, the spouse takes all.
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2452ff1f231c2097015ad7f17a04a166 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/initial-public-offering | Initial public offering | Initial public offering
…it was the world’s largest initial public offering (IPO) to date.
Its initial public offering (IPO) in May raised $16 billion, giving it a market value of $102.4 billion. By contrast, the largest IPO of an Internet company to date was that of the search-engine company Google Inc., which had raised $1.9 billion when it went public…
issued its initial public offering (IPO), which netted Page more than $3.8 billion. In an acquisition reflecting the company’s efforts to expand its services beyond Internet searches, Google purchased in 2006 the most popular Web site for user-submitted streaming videos, YouTube, for $1.65 billion in stock. In…
…raised $700 million through its initial public offering (IPO), the largest by an Internet company since Google Inc.’s $1.66 billion IPO in 2004. The company’s good fortunes were not to last, however, and by August 2012 its stock had plummeted 75 percent. Mason was ousted from his position as CEO…
…he led Kingsoft through its initial public offering (IPO), which raised nearly $100 million when the company was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. He left Kingsoft shortly after the IPO (though he later rejoined its board of directors), and for the next few years he led a venture…
LinkedIn’s initial public offering (IPO) that same year raised $353 million.
…time for its $3 billion initial public offering in 1996, serving as executive vice president for corporate operations (1997–99) and vice president and CEO of Lucent’s core business, the service provider networks group (1999–2000). Russo left in 2000 and became president and chief operating officer of Eastman Kodak in April…
…slated to open up an initial public offering (IPO) as early as 2017. The move suffered setbacks, however, and was repeatedly delayed. In September 2019 two of Saudi Aramco’s oil-processing facilities were attacked, including its largest, in Abqaiq, causing significant damage and temporarily disrupting its production capacity. Within weeks the…
…incredible growth, Ek oversaw Spotify’s initial public offering in April 2018. In an unusual move, the company offered no new stock, and instead only existing shares were made available. After the first day of trading, Spotify had a market value of about $27 billion.
In 2010 Tesla’s initial public offering raised some $226 million.
…he was involved with Twitter’s initial public offering (2013), which raised $1.8 billion.
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e0c2e9143a34b8dc6e888096655b3bb9 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/injunction | Injunction | Injunction
Injunction, in civil proceedings, order of a court requiring a party to do or not to do a specified act or acts.
An injunction is called prohibitory if it forbids the doing of an act and mandatory if it orders that an act be done. Disobedience to the order is punishable by contempt of court. Injunctions may be perpetual or temporary. A temporary injunction is normally in effect only until the hearing of the action is held, or for some lesser period; it is intended to preserve the status quo or prevent irreparable harm before the case can be fully heard.
By the end of the 14th century the Court of Chancery in England had begun to grant injunctions as a remedy for the inadequacy of decisions in the common-law courts. Often an award of damages did not fully protect the plaintiff (e.g., if the defendant intended to continue a trespass or a breach of covenant despite the payment of damages). When England’s courts of common law and equity were merged in the 19th century into one system, the new system was empowered to grant injunctions as well as damages.
Injunctions may be granted to restrain a wide range of acts: a breach of contract, such as a contract against engaging in a competing business; the commission of a tort (e.g., a nuisance); an injury to property (e.g., the erection of a wall on the plaintiff’s land); wrongful expulsion (e.g., from a club or a trade union); or wrongful disclosure of confidential information.
In the United States the injunction retains its essentially equitable character and, as in England, covers a wide spectrum of types of injurious or potentially injurious conduct. The most significant developments in the United States have been in connection with labour disputes, governmental regulation, and the protection of constitutional rights. The broadest extension of the injunction remedy has occurred in the field of governmental regulation. Many federal and state statutes specifically authorize the use of the injunction as an alternative to seeking criminal conviction for regulatory violations. In the enforcement of federal and state statutes, injunctions are sought with far greater frequency than are criminal penalties as a means of obtaining effective compliance. Injunctions have also been used increasingly in the protection of rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution, particularly to prevent violations of the rights of free assembly and speech, violations of religious freedom, and denial of equal rights and opportunity on racial grounds.
In civil-law countries the injunction generally has been used infrequently, except in Germany, where injunctions are used to protect against interference with property and to supplement the very weak slander laws.
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07c3e3d984ffe7552c1432d998099a5d | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Inklings | Inklings | Inklings
Inklings, informal group of writers that included C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien and that met in Oxford, Oxfordshire, England, in the 1930s and ’40s.
As Lewis’s brother Warren (“Warnie”) put it, “There were no rules, officers, agendas, or formal elections.” Lewis was the central figure, and others in it were mostly friends and university colleagues of his. Other members in addition to Lewis, Lewis’s brother, and Tolkien were Owen Barfield, Charles Williams, Colin Hardie, Adam Fox, Hugo Dyson, Lord David Cecil, and Nevill Coghill. The group’s name was taken over from a student literary club at the University of Oxford when it ceased in 1933. But “pre-Inkling” meetings of Lewis with Barfield and Tolkien had started in the late 1920s, before the group adopted the name. Tolkien explained the name as a pun, meaning both “people with vague or half-formed intimations and ideas” and “those who dabble in ink”—thus doubly suitable for a group of writers discussing works-in-progress.
When the group was most active, the Inklings held meetings twice a week, with six to eight members typically attending. On Tuesday mornings they convened at the Eagle and Child pub (commonly known as the “Bird and Baby”) in Oxford for beer and wide-ranging conversation. But their most important meetings were Thursday evenings in Lewis’s rooms at Magdalen College, when various members read aloud from books or poems they were writing and other members responded with vigorous critiques and suggestions. Lewis read many of his works to the group, including The Problem of Pain, The Screwtape Letters, Out of the Silent Planet, The Great Divorce, and Miracles. Tolkien (or his son Christopher) read chapters from The Lord of the Rings, and Williams read chapters from his novel All Hallow’s Eve and sections of his Arthurian poetry. As Warren Lewis recalled, “We were no mutual admiration society: praise for good work was unstinted, but censure for bad work—or even not-so-good work—was often brutally frank.”
The group contributed significantly to its members’ success through its criticism, support, and encouragement, an indebtedness evident in the acknowledgment pages and dedication pages of many of their works: Lewis’s The Problem of Pain, Williams’s The Forgiveness of Sins, and the first edition of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings were dedicated to the Inklings. Lewis wrote of the Inklings, “What I owe to them all is incalculable,” and Tolkien noted that “only by [Lewis’s] support and friendship did I ever struggle to the end” of The Lord of the Rings.
Attendance at Inklings meetings began to decline after 1945, and meetings came to an end in 1949. The last substantive reference to them was in Warren Lewis’s diary entry for October 20, 1949: “No one turned up after dinner, which was just as well, as [Lewis] has a bad cold and wanted to go to bed early.” Finally, in the entry for October 27, 1949: “No Inklings tonight, so dined at home.”
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28b79b5046ecbceece12025f9406b884 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/innovation-creativity/Facilitating-innovation-within-organizations | Facilitating innovation within organizations | Facilitating innovation within organizations
Changes in organization may be less dramatic than scientific discoveries but are equally important in terms of promoting efficiency and productivity. For instance, an organization may innovate in the way it operates or delivers services, resulting in greater efficiency, fewer errors, faster speed of production, and so on. In The Challenge of Innovating in Government (2006), Canadian political scientist Sandford Borins identifies several characteristics typical of organizations that are successful at innovation:
Borins notes that some of these characteristics are the opposite of what is seen in many government organizations and companies. For instance, in many organizations, people who suggest or enact innovation may be subject to sanction or dismissal, and the organization may display no interest in testing different ideas to see which are useful and practical. Some organizations have a superficial commitment to innovation in the sense that they eagerly embrace whatever the current trendy solution is but do not display the commitment to evaluate the usefulness of the new ideas or conduct any kind of measurement to see if they produce the desired results. Both approaches stifle effective innovation (as they would stifle effective scientific progress) because they are based on received beliefs and authority rather than on empirical observation and testing.
Moravian-born American economist and sociologist Joseph Schumpeter used the term creative destruction to describe change of the economy from within. He viewed entrepreneurs, who invent new goods and new ways of doing things, as essential to keeping an economic system constantly evolving. New products or ways of doing things necessarily disrupt existing markets. For example, the department and catalog store Montgomery Ward was once a major retailer but went out of business in 2001, due in part to loss of market share to low-price department stores such as Kmart and Walmart. Similarly, the instant-film camera developed by Polaroid was a popular consumer product for several decades but ceased production when it was surpassed by digital cameras. Schumpeter saw the process of creative destruction as positive in the long run because it promoted economic growth and rewarded innovation and improvement. Such experiences were informative to businesses to illustrate that individuals and corporations could also suffer when their particular skills or products were no longer demanded by the market.
American economist and professor Clayton M. Christensen coined the term disruptive technology (later disruptive innovation) to describe innovations that improve a product or service in ways that disrupt an existing market (as opposed to a “sustaining innovation,” which improves an existing product and reinforces the position of leading manufacturers in the field). The disruptive innovation often has characteristics that the traditional customer base does not care about, and may even be inferior compared to existing products, but will appeal to a different set of customers with different priorities. The innovation is “disruptive” not to the consumer (who, at least at first, has the choice to buy either the existing or innovative product) but to businesses that may be doing a good job supplying an existing product and yet see their market disappear as the new technology becomes widespread. One example of a disruptive innovation is downloadable music files that offer the convenience of buying music online and playing it from one’s computer, as well as the ability to purchase individual songs. This appealed first to young people who were quite comfortable with computers and MP3 players (versus older consumers more used to fixed stereo systems and the concept of songs collected into albums) and severely cut into the market for compact discs.
Cooperation between manufacturers and other institutions such as universities can facilitate innovation. In his work Biotechnology: The University-Industrial Complex (1986), American sociologist Martin Kenney coined the term university-industrial complex to describe, in the biotechnology industry, the flow of resources among universities (which provide knowledge and skilled labor), multinational corporations (that produce products), and venture capital firms (that provide financing to both research and production). He noted that university-employed scientists have provided most of the research that formed the basis of the biotech industry, that scientists often move between employment in academia and the corporate sector, and that many university graduate programs have been created or enlarged specifically to train students for the biotech industry. Development of the biotech industry was facilitated in large part by increased federal funding for science, with grants awarded on a competitive basis, which rewarded innovation while also facilitating the creation of well-equipped research labs at universities as well as within corporations. Other sciences have also followed the biotechnology model, with close relationships between the university and corporations becoming the norm, such that many universities now have “technology transfer” offices to facilitate the process.
Regional methods of organization can also influence innovation. In the early 1990s American regional planner and political scientist AnnaLee Saxenian looked at the differing fortunes of two areas once noted for their high-technology industry: Silicon Valley (south of San Francisco, California) and the Route 128 area (near Boston, Massachusetts). In the 1970s, both were noted as centers of innovation in the electronics industry, fueled in part by university research and military spending, and both faced downturns in the early 1980s. Silicon Valley recovered, however, with the help of new start-ups such as Sun Microsystems, as well as the continued prosperity of established companies such as Intel and Hewlett-Packard (HP), while Route 128 companies such as Wang Laboratories and Digital Equipment Corporation went out of business, and other area companies declined. Business investment in Silicon Valley increased by $25 billion between 1986 and 1990 while only increasing by $1 billion in the Route 128 area, and by 1990, Texas and southern California had both surpassed Route 128 as centers of electronics production.
Saxenian attributes these differences to differing regional industrial organization. Silicon Valley had a network-based industrial system with dense social networks and open labor markets, which promoted experimentation and collective learning so that competitors can learn from each other. The boundaries between individual companies and other institutions such as universities remained fluid. In contrast, Route 128 was characterized by a small number of large, hierarchical firms with barriers to information sharing between different firms and between firms and other institutions. Silicon Valley’s network system was better able to adapt to change (e.g., recovering from the loss of silicon chip manufacturing to Japan) while the Route 128 manufacturers were not able to respond when the industry shifted from minicomputers to workstations and personal computers. In general, Saxenian argued that industrial organization based on independent firms (the Route 128 model) can flourish when markets are stable and technology changes slowly because they can capitalize on economies of scale, but in a rapidly changing industry, firms may find themselves saddled with obsolete technology and a workforce with outdated skills and are less able to access external sources of information. In contrast, the regional network type of organization is more flexible in responding to change and better able to promote collective technological advance.
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b7a4f31f0dad9d3ff87b4140b0345597 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Inns-of-Court | Inns of Court | Inns of Court
Inns of Court, in London, group of four institutions of considerable antiquity that have historically been responsible for legal education. Their respective governing bodies, the benches, exercise the exclusive right of admitting persons to practice by a formal call to the bar. They consist of the Inner Temple and Middle Temple (both housed within the area known as The Temple), Lincoln’s Inn, and Gray’s Inn—all of which are located in the general vicinity of the Royal Courts of Justice, at the boundary between the City of London and Westminster.
The Inns of Court are voluntary societies, unchartered and unincorporated. Hence, their early history is obscure. Since their inception in the Middle Ages, however, they have been devoted to the technical study of English law, rather than Roman law, which was taught in the universities (see Doctors’ Commons). Previously, law was learned in the course of service, the first rudiments possibly in private clerkship to some official. By the mid-13th century, when the common law had become extensive and intricate, there arose a class of men, literate but lay, who created and dominated the legal profession and set up the Inns of Court as an answer to the problem of legal education. Manuals and books were produced in French rather than Latin. The students listened to arguments in court and discussed law among themselves.
In addition to those who practiced in the courts, there was also a large demand for stewards and legal advisers to landowners to conduct general business and keep manorial courts. These men needed the rudiments but not the refinements of common law. Such, too, was the case with the large class of attorneys and a growing class of bookkeepers and correspondence clerks. They gained most of their knowledge through an Inn of Chancery, an institution for training in the framing of writs and other legal documents used in the courts of chancery.
In the 14th century many of the household clerks (clergy with at least minor orders) of the chancellor’s office formed Inns and appear to have taken students for training. By the end of the century these Inns were in danger of being submerged by a flood of attorneys-to-be and students who used an Inn of Chancery as a preparation for entering an Inn of Court. Eventually, each Inn of Court secured control of one or more Inns of Chancery and supervised its affairs, appointed readers to teach in it, and later often bought its premises, becoming its landlord.
By the 15th century the Inns of Court were governed by their benchers, who had previously given at least two courses of lectures (readings) and who presided over mock arguments (moots) in which students argued difficult points of law before them.
Because the law was highly technical, proficiency could be acquired only by following the demanding studies of the Inns. In practice, the Inns thus had a monopoly over legal education. In the 15th and 16th centuries, however, many students joined the Inns for the purpose of getting a general education, rather than legal training. By the end of the 16th century the Inns of Court had begun to exclude attorneys and solicitors and refused to call them to the bar, with the result that attorneys especially fell back on the Inns of Chancery and finally came to form a profession distinct from that of the barristers.
By the beginning of the 17th century, all the Inns had acquired the actual ownership of their sites and begun building splendid halls, a process that continued through the century.
Various causes brought on the decline of this system of education. For one thing, the great activity of the printing press led students to rely more on printed material, and as a result they neglected attendance at readings and moots. The system broke down completely during the English Civil Wars; readings ceased in 1677, and only the fees survived. Having paid them, the student was deemed to have fulfilled his duties. With no readers to recommend students for call to the bar, the four Inns in the 18th century finally agreed to call students who had been in residence a stated number of terms. Later, it was settled that eating three dinners was equivalent to attending for the whole term. Meanwhile, the Inns of Chancery were no longer adequate for so large a group as the attorneys and solicitors, and these latter therefore created their own society.
In the 19th century the common law commissioners investigated the Inns of Court, which as a result took steps to resume their educational functions. Readerships were reestablished, and lawyers were engaged in teaching with a view to examinations conducted by the Bar Council of Legal Education, representing all four Inns.
In 1974 the Inns created an administrative body, the Senate of the Inns of Court and the Bar, which oversees such matters as finance, legal reform, and educational standards.
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49a6dbbac5b649ba60863c42b4e974a1 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/input-economics | Input | Input
…of production are the “inputs” necessary to obtain an “output.” However, not all the “inputs” that must be applied are to be regarded as factors in the economic sense. Some of these inputs in a normal situation are “free.” Although atmospheric air, for example, or a substitute for it,…
Labour input is relatively easy to measure if one is content to count heads of persons engaged in production or, preferably, hours worked. But in fact, the available hours data often relate to hours paid for, rather than hours worked, and these tend to…
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054f2b09c3a0e2ad8bfa1cd5cfeebfdb | https://www.britannica.com/topic/inquisitorial-procedure | Inquisitorial procedure | Inquisitorial procedure
Inquisitorial procedure, in law, one of the two methods of exposing evidence in court (the other being the adversary procedure; q.v.). The inquisitorial system is typical of countries that base their legal systems on civil or Roman law.
Under the inquisitorial procedure, the pretrial hearing for bringing a possible indictment is usually under the control of a judge whose responsibilities include the investigation of all aspects of the case, whether favourable or unfavourable to either the prosecution or defense. Witnesses are heard, and the accused, who is represented by counsel, may also be heard, though he is not required to speak and, if he does, he is not put under oath. In Germany the prosecution participates in the investigation; while in France the prosecution presents its recommendations only at the end of the hearing. In both France and Germany the investigating magistrate will recommend a trial only if he is sure that there is sufficient evidence of guilt. The entire dossier of the pretrial proceedings is made available to the defense.
At the trial the judge, once more, assumes a direct role, conducting the examination of witnesses, often basing his questions on the material in the dossier. Neither the prosecution nor the defense has the right to cross-examine, but they can present effective summations. The jury does not consult the dossier, instead relying on the facts brought out in the trial.
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9feb7d0512e3d4a37c956fcfb0f3f04a | https://www.britannica.com/topic/inside-contracting | Inside contracting | Inside contracting
Inside contracting, system of manufacturing intermediate between the putting-out system and full factory production. A factory proprietor supplies floor space and machinery to a contractor who then hires the workers needed to make a particular part on the proprietor’s premises. Inside contracting was used extensively in the U.S. in the 19th century.
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616af64e7be6da9a2b328ed362b1e3bd | https://www.britannica.com/topic/Insomnia-film-by-Nolan | Insomnia | Insomnia
Nolan followed up with Insomnia (2002), a thriller set in the Alaskan wilds, which starred Al Pacino as a compromised police detective.
…Robin Williams in the thriller Insomnia, and he later appeared in Ocean’s Thirteen (2007), the final installment of a popular comedy trilogy that featured George Clooney and Brad Pitt. After skewering his public persona with a role as himself in the Adam Sandler comedy Jack and Jill (2011), Pacino played…
…the Necklace (2001), the thriller Insomnia (2002), and the sci-fi adventure The Core (2003)—were only marginally successful, though she did win praise for her performance as American suffragist Alice Paul in the TV movie Iron Jawed Angels (2004). Lightning struck again, however, when she took on the title role in…
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b5320f075859dacdbb3e794f387baad7 | https://www.britannica.com/topic/inspiration-of-scripture | Inspiration of scripture | Inspiration of scripture
…from this axiom of biblical inspiration: whereas some have argued that the interpretation must always be literal, or as literal as possible (since “God always means what he says”), others have treated it as self-evident that words of divine origin must always have some profounder “spiritual” meaning than that which…
…Old and New Testaments was divinely inspired and fully correct. He challenged the divine authority of the biblical canon, which he reexamined in order to determine the sequence of composition of biblical books, their nature, and their manner of transmission. From this work he drew a crucial distinction between an…
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