Nature Protection

For those students who continue to play sports into high school, valuable skills learned on the field can be transferred to the real world. 
Employers know that to be successful, student athletes must have developed skills such as self-discipline, decision-making, problem solving and time-management.

With all of the benefits to playing sports, how can parents motivate their kids to play sports year after year?

Experts recommend finding out what's driving the kids first.

Recent studies conducted at the Michigan State University Institute for the Study of Youth Sports reveal that kids are motivated to play sports by a variety of factors.

"Kids want to have fun, improve their skills, be with their friends, get some physical activity," says Gould. "They like to win, but it's not the top reason nor the only reason."

And while sports have real value for kids, experts caution that children will not just catch the positive effects by showing up for practices or on game day. To reap the benefits of sports, they say that children need to be a part of a youth sports program that promotes mutal respect and encouragement.

"In order to help develop and enhance positive self esteem, a youth sports program must make sure that every kid feels like he or she belongs on the team," Burnett says. "At the recreation level, the real value of sports is that everybody plays."

"Unfortunately, in many situations in America now, in youth sports, and recreational level especially, the less talented kids are being trained to be spectators -- to root for the handful of kids who will be the representative all-stars," he says.

Also, in many leagues, some experts are concerned that the focus is on winning, a team's place in the standings and making it to post-season play.

"At the real early ages until about the age of 10," says Gould, "you don't really need to worry about score. A lot of parents are forgetting this fun and fundamentals stage."

There are two ways to motivate a kid to play sports, Burnett says.

One negative method is an all-or-nothing approach:"You have to beat the competitor. You are only as good as the competitor you defeat. There is no place for second place."

He suggests an alternate philosophy that motivates kids to participate in sports by getting them to judge their success based on the skills they develop, regardless of outcome.

"Now you're competing against yourself. You focus on the skills," Burnett says. "The top athletes focus on tasks, not on trophies."

Regardless of what type of program you and your children choose, "When all the dust settles," Burnett urges parents, "You need to make sure that when you look at your child, that you relate to your child as a kid first and an athlete second."

 

 

Insurance. Health Insurance etc/ Страхование. Медицинское страхование и т.д.

Insurance or assurance, device for indemnifying or guaranteeing an individual against loss. Reimbursement is made from a fund to which many individuals exposed to the same risk have contributed certain specified amounts, called premiums. Payment for an individual loss, divided among many, does not fall heavily upon the actual loser. The essence of the contract of insurance, called a policy, is mutuality. The major operations of an insurance company are underwriting, the determination of which risks the insurer can take on; and rate making, the decisions regarding necessary prices for such risks. The underwriter is responsible for guarding against adverse selection, wherein there is excessive coverage of high risk candidates in proportion to the coverage of low risk candidates. In preventing adverse selection, the underwriter must consider physical, psychological, and moral hazards in relation to applicants. Physical hazards include those dangers which surround the individual or property, jeopardizing the well-being of the insured. The amount of the premium is determined by the operation of the law of averages as calculated by actuaries. By investing premium payments in a wide range of revenue-producing projects, insurance companies have become major suppliers of capital, and they rank among the nation's largest institutional investors.

Common Types of Insurance

Life insurance, originally conceived to protect a man's family when his death left them without income, has developed into a variety of policy plans. In a "whole life" policy, fixed premiums are paid throughout the insured's lifetime; this accumulated amount, augmented by compound interest, is paid to a beneficiary in a lump sum upon the insured's death; the benefit is paid even if the insured had terminated the policy. Under "universal life," the insured can vary the amount and timing of the premiums; the funds compound to create the death benefit. With "variable life," the fixed premiums are invested in a portfolio (with earning reinvested), and the death benefit is based on the performance of the investment. In "term life," coverage is for a specified time period (e.g., 5-10 years); such plans do not build up value during the term. Annuity policies, which pay the insured a yearly income after a certain age, have also been developed. In the 1990s, life insurance companies began to allow early payouts to terminally ill patients.

Fire insurance usually includes damage from lightning; other insurance against the elements includes hail, tornado, flood, and drought. Complete automobile insurance includes not only insurance against fire and theft but also compensation for damage to the car and for personal injury to the victim of an accident (liability insurance); many car owners, however, carry only partial insurance. In many states liability insurance is compulsory, and a number of states have instituted so-called no-fault insurance plans, whereby automobile accident victims receive compensation without having to initiate a liability lawsuit, except in special cases. Bonding, or fidelity insurance, is designed to protect an employer against dishonesty or default on the part of an employee. Title insurance is aimed at protecting purchasers of real estate from loss by reason of defective title. Credit insurance safeguards businesses against loss from the failure of customers to meet their obligations. Marine insurance protects shipping companies against the loss of a ship or its cargo, as well as many other items, and so-called inland marine insurance covers a vast miscellany of items, including tourist baggage, express and parcel-post packages, truck cargoes, goods in transit, and even bridges and tunnels. In recent years, the insurance industry has broadened to guard against almost any conceivable risk; companies like Lloyd's will insure a dancer's legs, a pianist's fingers, or an outdoor event against loss from rain on a specified day.

The History of Insurance

The roots of insurance might be traced to Babylonia, where traders were encouraged to assume the risks of the caravan trade through loans that were repaid (with interest) only after the goods had arrived safely—a practice resembling bottomry and given legal force in the Code of Hammurabi (c.2100 BC). The Phoenicians and the Greeks applied a similar system to their seaborne commerce. The Romans used burial clubs as a form of life insurance, providing funeral expenses for members and later payments to the survivors.

With the growth of towns and trade in Europe, the medieval guilds undertook to protect their members from loss by fire and shipwreck, to ransom them from captivity by pirates, and to provide decent burial and support in sickness and poverty. By the middle of the 14th cent., as evidenced by the earliest known insurance contract (Genoa, 1347), marine insurance was practically universal among the maritime nations of Europe. In London, Lloyd's Coffee House (1688) was a place where merchants, shipowners, and underwriters met to transact business. By the end of the 18th cent. Lloyd's had progressed into one of the first modern insurance companies. In 1693 the astronomer Edmond Halley constructed the first mortality table, based on the statistical laws of mortality and compound interest. The table, corrected (1756) by Joseph Dodson, made it possible to scale the premium rate to age; previously the rate had been the same for all ages.

Insurance developed rapidly with the growth of British commerce in the 17th and 18th cent. Prior to the formation of corporations devoted solely to the business of writing insurance, policies were signed by a number of individuals, each of whom wrote his name and the amount of risk he was assuming underneath the insurance proposal, hence the term underwriter. The first stock companies to engage in insurance were chartered in England in 1720, and in 1735, the first insurance company in the American colonies was founded at Charleston, S.C. Fire insurance corporations were formed in New York City (1787) and in Philadelphia (1794). The Presbyterian Synod of Philadelphia sponsored (1759) the first life insurance corporation in America, for the benefit of Presbyterian ministers and their dependents. After 1840, with the decline of religious prejudice against the practice, life insurance entered a boom period. In the 1830s the practice of classifying risks was begun.

The New York fire of 1835 called attention to the need for adequate reserves to meet unexpectedly large losses; Massachusetts was the first state to require companies by law (1837) to maintain such reserves. The great Chicago fire (1871) emphasized the costly nature of fires in structurally dense modern cities. Reinsurance, whereby losses are distributed among many companies, was devised to meet such situations and is now common in other lines of insurance. The Workmen's Compensation Act of 1897 in Britain required employers to insure their employees against industrial accidents. Public liability insurance, fostered by legislation, made its appearance in the 1880s; it attained major importance with the advent of the automobile.

In the 19th cent. many friendly or benefit societies were founded to insure the life and health of their members, and many fraternal orders were created to provide low-cost, members-only insurance. Fraternal orders continue to provide insurance coverage, as do most labor organizations. Many employers sponsor group insurance policies for their employees; such policies generally include not only life insurance, but sickness and accident benefits and old-age pensions, and the employees usually contribute a certain percentage of the premium.

Since the late 19th cent. there has been a growing tendency for the state to enter the field of insurance, especially with respect to safeguarding workers against sickness and disability, either temporary or permanent, destitute old age, and unemployment. The U.S. government has also experimented with various types of crop insurance, a landmark in this field being the Federal Crop Insurance Act of 1938. In World War II the government provided life insurance for members of the armed forces; since then it has provided other forms of insurance such as pensions for veterans and for government employees.

After 1944 the supervision and regulation of insurance companies, previously an exclusive responsibility of the states, became subject to regulation by Congress under the interstate commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution. Until the 1950s, most insurance companies in the United States were restricted to providing only one type of insurance, but then legislation was passed to permit fire and casualty companies to underwrite several classes of insurance. Many firms have since expanded, many mergers have occurred, and multiple-line companies now dominate the field. In 1999, Congress repealed banking laws that had prohibited commercial banks from being in the insurance business; this measure was expected to result in expansion by major banks into the insurance arena.

In recent years insurance premiums (particularly for liability policies) have increased rapidly, leaving unprecedented numbers of Americans uninsured. Many blame the insurance conglomerates, contending that U.S. citizens are paying for bad risks made by the companies. Insurance companies place the burden of guilt on law firms and their clients, who they say have brought unreasonably large civil suits to court, a trend that has become so common in the United States that legislation has been proposed to limit lawsuit awards. Catastrophic earthquakes, hurricanes, and wildfires in late 1980s and the 90s have also strained many insurance company's reserves.

Snowflake/ Снежинка.

Snow crystals form when tiny supercooled cloud droplets (about 10 mm in diameter) freeze. These droplets are able to remain liquid at temperatures lower than -18C (0F), because to freeze, a few molecules in the droplet need to get together by chance to form an arrangement similar to that in an ice lattice; then the droplet freezes around this "nucleus." Experiments show that this "homogeneous" nucleation of cloud droplets only occurs at temperatures lower than -35C (-31F). In warmer clouds an aerosol particle or "ice nucleus" must be present in (or in contact with) the droplet to act as a nucleus. Our understanding of what particles make efficient ice nuclei is poor — what we do know is they are very rare compared to that cloud condensation nuclei on which liquid droplets form. Clays, desert dust and biological particles may be effective, although to what extent is unclear. Artificial nuclei include particles of silver iodide and dry ice, and these are used to stimulate precipitation in cloud seeding.

Once a droplet has frozen, it grows in the water-supersaturated air, when the temperature remains below the freezing point. The droplet then grows by condensation of water vapor onto the ice surfaces. Air saturation with water is maintained by continuous simultaneous evaporation of water droplets. Thus ice crystals grow at the expense of water droplets in a process called the Wegner-Bergeron-Findeison process. These large crystals are an efficient source of precipitation, since they fall through the atmosphere due to their weight, and may collide and aggregate in clusters. These aggregates are snowflakes, and are usually the type of ice particle that falls to the ground. Guinness World Records list the world’s largest snowflakes as those of January 1887 at Fort Keogh, Montana; allegedly one measured 38 cm (15 inches) wide.

The exact details of the sticking mechanism remain controversial. Possibilities include mechanical interlocking, sintering, electrostatic attraction as well as the existence of a "sticky" liquid-like layer on the crystal surface. The individual ice crystals often have hexagonal symmetry. Although the ice is clear, scattering of light by the crystal facets and hollows/imperfections mean that the crystals often appear white in color due to diffuse reflection of the whole spectrum of light by the small ice particles. The shape of the snowflake is determined broadly by the temperature and humidity at which it is formed. Rarely, at a temperature of around -2C (28F), snowflakes can form in threefold symmetry — triangular snowflakes. The most common snow particles are visibly irregular, although near-perfect snowflakes may be more common in pictures because they are more visually appealing. It is unlikely that any two snowflakes are alike due to the estimated 10,000,000,000,000,000,000 water molecules which make up a typical snowflake, which grow at different rates and in different patterns depending on the changing temperature and humidity within the atmosphere that the snowflake falls through on its way to the ground. The METAR code for snow is SN, while snow showers are coded SHSN.

Steady state theory.

In cosmology, the steady state theory is a model developed in 1949 by Fred Hoyle, Thomas Gold and others as an alternative to the Big Bang theory. Although the model had a large number of supporters among cosmologists in the 1950s and 1960s, the number of supporters decreased markedly in the late 1960s and today it is considered a non-standard cosmology. It is also the basis for another theory known as the quasi-steady state theory which postulates a lot of little big bangs occurring over time.  
The steady state theory was developed as a result of theoretical calculations that showed that a static universe was impossible under general relativity and observations by Edwin Hubble that the universe was expanding. The steady state theory asserts that although the universe is expanding, it nevertheless does not change its look over time. For this to work, new matter must be formed to keep the density equal over time.

Because only very little matter needs to be formed, roughly a few hundred atoms of hydrogen in the Milky Way Galaxy each year, it is not a problem of the theory that the forming of matter is not observed directly. Despite violating conservation of mass, the steady state theory had a number of attractive features. Most notably, the theory removes the need for the universe to have a beginning.

Problems with the steady-state theory began to emerge in the late 1960s, when observations apparently supported the idea that the universe was in fact changing: quasars and radio galaxies were found only at large distances (i.e., redshift, and thus, because of the finiteness of the speed of light, in the past) not in closer galaxies. Halton Arp, also since the 1960s, has been taking a different view of the data, claiming that evidence can also point to quasars existing as close as the local Virgo cluster.

For most cosmologists, the refutation of the steady-state theory came with the discovery of the cosmic background radiation in 1965, which was predicted by the big bang theory. Within the steady state theory this background radiation is the result of light from ancient stars which has been scattered by galactic dust. However, this explanation has been unconvincing to most cosmologists as the cosmic microwave background is very smooth, making it difficult to explain how it arose from point sources, and the microwave background shows no evidence of features such as polarization which are normally associated with scattering. Furthermore, its spectrum is so close to that of an ideal black body that it could hardly be formed by the superposition of contributions from dust clumps at different temperatures as well as at different redshifts.

As of 2005, the big bang theory is the one that the majority of astronomers consider the best approximation to describing the origin of the universe. In most astrophysical publications, the big bang is implicitly accepted and is used as the basis of more complete theories. At the same time, after the unexpected observation of an accelerating universe in the late-1990s, there were efforts to develop quasi-steady state theories, in which there is not a single big bang but rather multiple big bangs over time which create matter.

Windsurfing/ Виндсёрфинг.

Windsurfing is a surface water sport using a windsurf board, also commonly called a sailboard, usually two to five meters long and powered by a single sail. The rig is connected to the board by a free-rotating flexible joint called the Universal Joint (U-Joint). Unlike a rudder-steered sailboat, a windsurfer is steered by the tilting and rotating of the mast and sail as well as tilting and carving the board. This method of controlling the board's direction is called the free-sail system.

The sport combines aspects of both sailing and surfing, along with certain athletic aspects shared with other board sports like skateboarding, snowboarding, waterskiing, wakeboarding and kitesurfing. Although it might be considered a minimalistic version of a sailboat, a windsurfer offers experiences that are outside the scope of most other sailing craft design. A windsurfer holds the world speed record for sailing craft (see below); and, windsurfers can perform jumps, inverted loops, spinning maneuvers, and other "freestyle" moves that cannot be matched by any sailboat. Windsurfers were the first to ride the world's largest waves, such as Jaws on the island of Maui, and, with very few exceptions, it was not until the advent of tow-in surfing that waves of that size became accessible to surfers.

Windsurfing includes speed sailing, slalom, course racing, wave sailing, superX, and freestyle as distinct disciplines.

Though windsurfing is possible in winds from near 0 to 50 knots, the ideal planing conditions for most recreational sailors is 15-25 knots, with lighter winds resulting in displacement mode sailing.

Lessons can be taken with a school. With coaching and favorable conditions, the basic skills of sailing, steering, and turning can be learned within a few hours. Competence in the sport and mastery of more advanced maneuvers such as planing, carve gybing (turning downwind at speed), water starting, jumping, and more advanced moves can require lengthy practice.

46 dead in twin Mumbai blasts.

At least 46 people have been killed and more than 100 injured in a pair of explosions that shook India's financial capital Mumbai, according to hospital officials.

One of the blasts occurred near the colonial-era Gateway to India monument -- a famous landmark and popular tourist attraction -- during lunch-hour.

Another blast struck in or close to one of the city's main Hindu temples.

The explosive devices were inside the trunks of two taxis, police said.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the blasts, which occurred during the busy lunch time period, but police say they suspect militant Islamic groups who have been blamed in the past for several bomb attacks in Mumbai.

There were also earlier reports of an explosion outside the main central railway station, Chhatrapati Sivaji Terminus, also known as Victoria Terminus, but that has not been confirmed.

Bomb squads were at the scenes of the explosions, police officials told CNN.

The Gateway to India is situated close to one of Mumbai's top hotels, the Taj Mahal and reports say several windows in the hotel were blown out by the blast.

Stock prices on the Mumbai stock exchange initially plunged 120 points on news of the blasts, but stabilized shortly afterwards. (Stocks slide)

Sources in Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay, say police have sealed off the city to ensure no one can leave or enter.

Monday's blasts were the eighth such incident in as many months and the worst attack in Mumbai since 1993.

Security forces in the city have been on high alert following a series of bomb explosions on buses across the Mumbai metropolitan area over the past several months.

The most recent bus bombing took place on July 29, killing four people on board a packed commuter bus in the commercial heart of the city.

Police at the time said they suspected the attack was carried out by a militant group, the Lashker-e-Taiba -- one of two Pakistan-based Islamic militant groups that New Delhi says was behind an attack on the Indian parliament in December 2001.

Pakistan, which has denied a role in the parliament attack, condemned Monday's blasts in Mumbai.

"We deplore these attacks and we sympathize with the victims and their families, foreign ministry spokesman Masood Khan told reporters in Islamabad.

"We condemn all acts of terror and I think that such wanton targeting of civilians should be condemned in the strongest possible terms."

Hindu-Muslim violence

In 1993, a wave of bombings hit several buildings in Mumbai, killing at least 250 people and injuring dozens more.

Those blasts were blamed on underworld gangs seeking to avenge Muslim deaths during Hindu-Muslim riots following the destruction of a mosque in the holy city of Ayodhya in northern India by a Hindu mob. (History of violence)

Monday's explosions follow the release of an archeological report into the mosque site. Hindus claim the Islamic mosque was built on a holy Hindu site. But Muslims dispute this and claim the site themselves.

Details from the highly anticipated report emerged on Monday, saying that experts found that an ancient structure did in fact exist on the disputed site but there was fierce disagreement about whether it was a Hindu temple. (Full story)

Police in Mumbai have initially ruled out a link between the explosions and the report.

 

 

Agatha Christie's secret life as an archaeologist.

She is one of the best-known crime writers of all time but few know the extent of Agatha Christie's archaeological pedigree.

Married in 1930 to eminent archaeologist Max Mallowan, Christie spent two decades living on excavation sites in the Middle East, writing her crime novels and helping out with her husband's work.

Travel by boat and on the Orient Express to far-flung places such as Cairo, Damascus and Baghdad inspired some of Christie's best-known works of detective fiction, including "Murder on the Orient Express," "Death on the Nile," and "Murder in Mesopotamia."

Now, 3,000-year-old ivory artifacts recovered by Mallowan between 1949 and 1963 from the ancient city of Nimrud, in what is now Iraq, and likely cleaned by his famous wife using cotton wool buds and face cream, go on display Monday at the British Museum in London.

Nimrud was a city in the Assyrian kingdom, which flourished between 900-612 B.C.. The ivories found by Mallowan and his team were originally made in what is now Syria and Lebanon and brought to Assyria as looted treasures.