INTEREST

Interest is a fee paid on borrowed assets. Assets that are sometimes lent with interest include money, shares, consumer goods through hire purchase, major assets such as aircraft, and even entire factories in finance lease arrangements. The interest is calculated upon the value of the assets in the same manner as upon money. Interest can be thought of as "rent on money". For example, if you want to borrow money from the bank, there is a certain rate you have to pay according to how much you want loaned to you.

Interest is compensation to the lender for foregoing other useful investments that could have been made with the loaned asset. These foregone investments are known as the opportunity cost. Instead of the lender using the assets directly, they are advanced to the borrower. The borrower then enjoys the benefit of using the assets ahead of the effort required to obtain them, while the lender enjoys the benefit of the fee paid by the borrower for the privilege. The amount lent, or the value of the assets lent, is called the principal. This principal value is held by the borrower on credit. Interest is therefore the price of credit, not the price of money as it is commonly believed to be.^{[citation needed]} The percentage of the principal that is paid as a fee (the interest), over a certain period of time, is called the interest rate.

History of interest

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Interest is the price paid for the use of savings over a given period of time. In ancient biblical Israel, it was against the Law of Moses to charge interest on private loans.^{[citation needed]}During the Middle Ages, time was considered to be property of God. Therefore, to charge interest was considered to be commerce with God's property. Also, St. Thomas Aquinas, the leading theologian of the Catholic Church, argued that the charging of interest is wrong because it amounts to "double charging", charging for both the thing and the use of the thing. The church regarded this as a sin of usury; nevertheless, this rule was never strictly obeyed and eroded gradually until it disappeared during the industrial revolution.^{[citation needed]}

Usury has always been viewed negatively by the Roman Catholic Church. The Second Lateran Council condemned any repayment of a debt with more money than was originally loaned, the Council of Vienna explicitly prohibited usury and declared any legislation tolerant of usury to be heretical, and the first scholastics reproved the charging of interest. In the medieval economy, loans were entirely a consequence of necessity (bad harvests, fire in a workplace) and, under those conditions, it was considered morally reproachable to charge interest.^{[citation needed]}

Interest has often been looked down upon in Islamic civilization as well for the same reason for which usury was forbidden by the Catholic Church, with most scholars agreeing that the Qur'an explicitly forbids charging interest. Medieval jurists therefore developed several financial instruments to encourage responsible lending. These instruments sometimes closely resemble interest, leading some to wonder whether they truly satisfy the letter and spirit of the rule.^{[citation needed]}

In the Renaissance era, greater mobility of people facilitated an increase in commerce and the appearance of appropriate conditions for entrepreneurs to start new, lucrative businesses. Given that borrowed money was no longer strictly for consumption but for production as well, interest was no longer viewed in the same manner. The School of Salamanca elaborated on various reasons that justified the charging of interest: the person who received a loan benefited, and one could consider interest as a premium paid for the risk taken by the loaning party. There was also the question of opportunity cost, in that the loaning party lost other possibilities of using the loaned money. Finally and perhaps most originally was the consideration of money itself as merchandise, and the use of one's money as something for which one should receive a benefit in the form of interest. Martín de Azpilcueta also considered the effect of time. Other things being equal, one would prefer to receive a given good now rather than in the future. This preference indicates greater value. Interest, under this theory, is the payment for the time the loaning individual is deprived of the money.

Economically, the interest rate is the cost of capital and is subject to the laws of supply and demand of the money supply. The first attempt to control interest rates through manipulation of the money supply was made by the French Central Bank in 1847.

The first formal studies of interest rates and their impact on society were conducted by Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham and Mirabeau during the birth of classic economic thought.^{[citation needed]} In the early 20th century, Irving Fisher made a major breakthrough in the economic analysis of interest rates by distinguishing nominal interest from real interest. Several perspectives on the nature and impact of interest rates have arisen since then. Among academics, the more modern views of John Maynard Keynes and Milton Friedman are widely accepted.^{[citation needed]}

The latter half of the 20th century saw the rise of interest-free Islamic banking and finance, a movement which attempts to apply religious law developed in the medieval period to the modern economy. Some entire countries, including Iran, Sudan, and Pakistan, have taken steps to eradicate interest from their financial systems entirely.^{[citation needed]} Interest is the fee to use the money.

Types of interest

Simple interest

Simple interest is calculated only on the principal amount, or on that portion of the principal amount which remains unpaid.

The amount of simple interest is calculated according to the following formula:

where r is the period interest rate (I/m), B₀ the initial balance and m the number of time periods elapsed.

To calculate the period interest rate r, one divides the interest rate I by the number of periods m.

For example, imagine that a credit card holder has an outstanding balance of $2500 and that the simple interest rate is 12.99% per annum. The interest added at the end of 3 months would be,

and he would have to pay $2581.19 to pay off the balance at this point.

If instead he makes interest-only payments for each of those 3 months at the period rate r, the amount of interest paid would be,

His balance at the end of 3 months would still be $2500.

In this case, the time value of money is not factored in. The steady payments have an additional cost that needs to be considered when comparing loans. For example, given a $100 principal:

• Credit card debt where $1/day is charged: 1/100 = 1%/day = 7%/week = 365%/year.
• Corporate bond where the first $3 are due after six months, and the second $3 are due at the year's end: (3+3)/100 = 6%/year.
• Certificate of deposit (GIC) where $6 is paid at the year's end: 6/100 = 6%/year.

There are two complications involved when comparing different simple interest bearing offers.

1. When rates are the same but the periods are different a direct comparison is inaccurate because of the time value of money. Paying $3 every six months costs more than $6 paid at year end so, the 6% bond cannot be 'equated' to the 6% GIC.
2. When interest is due, but not paid, does it remain 'interest payable', like the bond's $3 payment after six months or, will it be added to the balance due? In the latter case it is no longer simple interest, but compound interest.

A bank account offering only simple interest and from which money can freely be withdrawn is unlikely, since withdrawing money and immediately depositing it again would be advantageous.

Compound interest

Main article: Compound interest

Compound interest is very similar to simple interest; however, with time, the difference becomes considerably larger. This difference is because unpaid interest is added to the balance due. Put another way, the borrower is charged interest on previous interest. Assuming that no part of the principal or subsequent interest has been paid, the debt is calculated by the following formulas:

where I_comp is the compound interest, B₀ the initial balance, B_n the balance after n periods (where n is not necessarily an integer) and r the period rate.

For example, if the credit card holder above chose not to make any payments, the interest would accumulate

So, at the end of 3 months the credit card holder's balance would be $2582.07 and he would now have to pay $82.07 to get it down to the initial balance. Simple interest is approximately the same as compound interest over short periods of time, so frequent payments are the best (least expensive) payment strategy.

A problem with compound interest is that the resulting obligation can be difficult to interpret. To simplify this problem, a common convention in economics is to disclose the interest rate as though the term were one year, with annual compounding, yielding the effective interest rate. However, interest rates in lending are often quoted as nominal interest rates (i.e., compounding interest uncorrected for the frequency of compounding).^{[citation needed]}

Loans often include various non-interest charges and fees. One example are points on a mortgage loan in the United States. When such fees are present, lenders are regularly required to provide information on the 'true' cost of finance, often expressed as an annual percentage rate (APR). The APR attempts to express the total cost of a loan as an interest rate after including the additional fees and expenses, although details may vary by jurisdiction.

In economics, continuous compounding is often used due to its particular mathematical properties.^{[citation needed]}

Fixed and floating rates

Commercial loans generally use simple interest, but they may not always have a single interest rate over the life of the loan. Loans for which the interest rate does not change are referred to as fixed rate loans. Loans may also have a changeable rate over the life of the loan based on some reference rate (such as LIBOR and EURIBOR), usually plus (or minus) a fixed margin. These are known as floating rate, variable rate or adjustable rate loans.

Combinations of fixed-rate and floating-rate loans are possible and frequently used. Loans may also have different interest rates applied over the life of the loan, where the changes to the interest rate are governed by specific criteria other than an underlying interest rate. An example would be a loan that uses specific periods of time to dictate specific changes in the rate, such as a rate of 5% in the first year, 6% in the second, and 7% in the third.^{[citation needed]}

Composition of interest rates

In economics, interest is considered the price of credit, therefore, it is also subject to distortions due to inflation. The nominal interest rate, which refers to the price before adjustment to inflation, is the one visible to the consumer (i.e., the interest tagged in a loan contract, credit card statement, etc). Nominal interest is composed of the real interest rate plus inflation, among other factors. A simple formula for the nominal interest is:

i = r + π

Where i is the nominal interest, r is the real interest and π is inflation.

This formula attempts to measure the value of the interest in units of stable purchasing power. However, if this statement was true, it would imply at least two misconceptions. First, that all interest rates within an area that shares the same inflation (i.e. the same country) should be the same. Second, that the lender knows the inflation for the period of time that he/she is going to lend the money.

One reason behind the difference between the interest that yields a Treasury bond and the interest that yields a Mortgage loan is the risk that the lender takes from lending money to an economic agent. In this particular case, a government is more likely to pay than a private citizen. Therefore, the interest rate charged to a private citizen is larger than the rate charged to the government.

To take into account the information asymmetry aforementioned, both the value of inflation and the real price of money is changed to their expected values resulting in the following equation:

i_t = r_{(t + 1)} + π_{(t + 1)} + σ

Where i_t is the nominal interest at the time of the loan, r_{(t + 1)} is the real interest expected over the period of the loan, π_{(t + 1)} is the inflation expected over the period of the loan and σ is the representative value for the risk engaged in the operation.

BIOGRAPHY

A biography (from the Greek words bíos (βίος) meaning "life", and gráphein (γράφειν) meaning "to write") is a description of someone's life, usually published in the form of a book or essay, or in some other form, such as a film. An autobiography (auto, meaning "self", giving self-biography) is a biography by the same person it is about. A biography is more than a list of impersonal facts (education, work, relationships and death), it also portrays the subject's experience of those events. Unlike a profile or curriculum vitae (resume), a biography presents the subject's story, highlighting various aspects of his or her life, including intimate details of experiences, and may include an analysis of the subject's personality.

A work is biographical if it covers all of a person's life. As such, biographical works are usually non-fiction, but fiction can also be used to portray a person's life. One in-depth form of biographical coverage is called legacy writing. Together, all biographical works form the genre known as biography, in literature, film, and other forms of media.

Biography portal

Early forms

The first known biographies were written by scribes commissioned by the various rulers of antiquity: ancient Assyria, ancient Babylonia, ancient Egypt, ancient Mesopotamia, among others. Such biographies tended to be chiseled into stone or clay tablets.

Classical forms

Ancient Greeks developed the biographical tradition which we have inherited, although until the 5th century AD, when the word 'biographia' first appears, in Damascius' Life of Isodorus, biographical pieces were called simply "lives" (βιοι: "bioi"). It is quite likely that the Greeks were drawing on a pre-existing eastern tradition; certainly Herodotus' Histories contains more detailed biographical information on Persian kings and subjects than on anyone else, implying he had a Persian source for it.

The earliest surviving pieces which we would identify as biographical are Isocrates' Life of Evagoras and Xenophon's Life of Agesilaos, both from the fifth century BC. Both identified themselves as encomia, or works of praise, and that biography was regarded as a discrete entity from historiography is evidenced by the fact that Xenophon treated King Agesilaos of Sparta twice in his works, once in the above-mentioned encomium and once in his Greek History; evidently the two genres were conceived as making different demands of authors who enrolled in them. Xenophon could present his Cyropaedia, an account of the childhood of the Persian King Cyrus the Great now regarded as so fabulous that it falls rather into a novelistic tradition than a biographical one, as a serious work, without any disclaimers or caveats.

Whereas Thucydides set the benchmark for a historiographical tradition comprising 'conclusions ... drawn from proofs quoted ... [which] may safely be relied upon' (Thuc. 1.21), and offering little explicit judgement on the people with whom he dealt, biographers were quite often more concerned with drawing a moral point from their investigations of their subjects. Parallel Lives by Plutarch, a Greek writing under the Roman empire, is a series of short biographies of eminent men, ancient and contemporary, arranged in pairs comprising one Greek, one Roman, in order that a broad educative point might be extraced from the comparison (for example Mark Antony and Demetrius were paradigms of tyranny, Lysander and Sulla examples of great men degenerating into blood-thirsty corruption).

However, although their moralising approach is not in fashion in the current intellectual climate, Greek biographies still have much to offer the modern reader, and for the most part it is reasonable to assume that while authors may have suppressed details which did not fall in with the general theme which they wished to convey, they are unlikely to have fabricated much. Not least, they were instrumental in developing the modern idea of the person. The traditional Greek attitude to individuals was to 'reduce them to types'; the Peripatetic tradition records various categories into which men might fall: the flatterer, the superstitious man and so on. Greek rhetorical handbooks give advice on 'ethopoia', that is creating a character, one of a recognised type, to win favour in the law courts.

The biographical tradition does draw on these types, but it also gives explicit recognition to the importance of individual idiosyncrasies in defining a man, and places the emphasis firmly on a man's personality rather than merely listing his accomplishments. As Plutarch says in the introduction to his Life of Alexander the Great, 'in the most illustrious deeds there is not always a manifestation of virtue and vice, but a slight thing like a phrase or a jest often makes a greater revelation than battles where thousands fall, or the greatest armaments, or sieges of cities'. Thus the individual is recognised as having some value and interest irrespective of the impact of his actions on the broader sweep of history.

Under the Roman Empire, the biographical and historiographical traditions converged somewhat, likely due to the nature of government, whereby the state was dominated by a single emperor with totalitarian power and whose character and actions set the tone for the period; Tacitus's History and his Annals, as well as Dio's History contain much of the same material as the biographer Suetonius's Lives of the Twelve Caesars. However, although Tacitus in particular was extremely critical of the regime, his disapproval emerges in subtle characterisation and arrangement of his material, in contrast with Suetonius' vicious authorial comment.

Middle Ages and Renaissance

The Early Middle Ages (AD 400 to 1450) saw a decline in awareness of classical culture. During this time, the only repositories of knowledge and records of early history in Europe was the Roman Catholic Church. Hermits, monks and priests used this historic period to write the first modern biographies. Their subjects were usually restricted to church fathers, martyrs, popes and saints. Their works were meant to be inspirational to people, vehicles for conversion to Christianity. See hagiography. One significant example of biography from this period which does not exactly fit into that mold is the life of Charlemagne as written by his courtier Einhard.

By the late Middle Ages, biographies became less church-oriented as biographies of kings, knights and tyrants began to appear. The most famous of these such biographies was 'Le Morte d'Arthur' by Sir Thomas Malory. The book was an account of the life of the fabled King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table.

Following Malory, the new emphasis on humanism during the Renaissance promoted a focus on secular subjects such as artists and poets, and encouraged writing in the vernacular. Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Artists (1550) was a landmark biography focusing on secular lives. Vasari created celebrities of his subjects, as the Lives became an early "best seller." Two other developments are noteworthy: the development of the printing press in the fifteenth century and the gradual increase in literacy.

Biographies in the English language began appearing during the reign of Henry VIII. John Foxe’s Acts and Monuments (1563), better known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs, essentially was the first dictionary of biography, followed by Thomas Fuller’s The History of the Worthies of England (1662), with a distinct focus on public life.

Modern biography

The "Golden Age" of English biography emerged in the late eighteenth century, the century in which the terms "biography" and "autobiography" entered the English lexicon. The classic works of the period were Samuel Johnson's Critic material and letting the subject "speak for itself." While Boswell compiled, Samuel Johnson composed. Johnson did not follow a chronological narration of the subject's life but used anecdotes and incidents selectively. Johnson rejected the notion that facts revealed truth. He suggested that biographers should seek their subject in "domestic privacies", to find little known facts or anecdotes which revealed character. (Casper, 1999)

The romantic biographers disputed many of Johnson's judgments. Jean Jacques Rousseau's Confessions (1781-88) exploited the romantic point of view and the confessional mode. The tradition of testimony and confession was brought to the New World by Puritan and Quaker memoirists and journal-keepers where the form continued to be influential. Benjamin Franklin's autobiography (1791) would provide the archetype for the American success story. (Stone, 1982) Autobiography would remain an influential form of biographical writing.

Generally American biography followed the English model, while incorporating Thomas Carlyle's view that biography was a part of history. Carlyle asserted that the lives of great human beings were essential to understanding society and its institutions. While the historical impulse would remain a strong element in early American biography, American writers carved out their own distinct approach. What emerged was a rather didactic form of biography which sought to shape individual character of the reader in the process of defining national character. (Casper, 1999)

The distinction between mass biography and literary biography which had formed by the middle of the nineteenth century reflected a breach between high culture and middle-class culture. This division would endure for the remainder of the century. Biography began to flower thanks to new publishing technologies and an expanding reading public. This revolution in publishing made books available to a larger audience of readers. Almost ten times as many American biographies appeared from 1840 to 1860 than had appeared in the first two decades of the century. In addition, affordable paperback editions of popular biographies were published for the first time. Also, American periodicals began publishing series of biographical sketches. (Casper, 1999) The topical emphasis shifted from republican heroes to self-made men and women.

Much of late 19th-century biography remained formulaic. Notably, few autobiographies had been written in the 19th century. The following century witnessed a renaissance of autobiography beginning with Booker T. Washington's, Up From Slavery (1901) and followed by Henry Adams' Education (1907), a chronicle of self-defined failure which ran counter to the predominant American success story. The publication of socially significant autobiographies by both men and women began to flourish. (Stone, 1982)

The authority of psychology and sociology was ascendant and would make its mark on the new century’s biographies. (Stone, 1982) The demise of the "great man" theory of history was indicative of the emerging mindset. Human behavior would be explained through Darwinian theories. "Sociological" biographies conceived of their subjects' actions as the result of the environment, and tended to downplay individuality. The development of psychoanalysis led to a more penetrating and comprehensive understanding of the biographical subject, and induced biographers to give more emphasis to childhood and adolescence. Clearly, psychological ideas were changing the way Americans read and wrote biographies, as a culture of autobiography developed in which the telling of one's own story became a form of therapy. (Casper, 1999)

The conventional concept of national heroes and narratives of success disappeared in the obsession with psychological explorations of personality. The new school of biography featured iconoclasts, scientific analysts, and fictional biographers. This wave included Lytton Strachey, André Maurois, and Emil Ludwig among others. Strachey's biographies had an influence similar to that which Samuel Johnson had enjoyed earlier. In the 1920s and '30s, biographical writers sought to capitalize on Strachey's popularity and imitate his style. Robert Graves (I, Claudius, 1934) stood out among those following Strachey's model of "debunking biographies." The trend in literary biography was accompanied in popular biography by a sort of "celebrity voyeurism." in the early decades of the century. This latter form's appeal to readers was based on curiosity more than morality or patriotism.

By World War I, cheap hard-cover reprints had become popular. The decades of the 1920s witnessed a biographical "boom." In 1929, nearly 700 biographies were published in the United States, and the first dictionary of American biography appeared. In the decade that followed, numerous biographies continued to be published despite the economic depression. They reached a growing audience through inexpensive formats and via public libraries.

According to the scholar Caroyln Heilbrun, women's biographies were revolutionized during the second wave of feminist activism in the 1970s. At this time women began to be portrayed more accurately, even if it downplayed the achievements or integrity of a man (Heilbrun 12).

FOREST

FOREST (an acronym for "Freedom Organisation for the Right to Enjoy Smoking Tobacco") is a United Kingdom political pressure group that campaigns for the right of people to smoke tobacco and opposes attempts to ban or reduce tobacco consumption. FOREST also disputes the health risks of smoking.

While FOREST describes itself as the "voice and friend of the smoker",^[1] the organization has been characterized as a front group, as it is organized and funded by the tobacco industry and has generated little grassroots interest.^[2] According to internal memos, the tobacco industry designed FOREST to be controlled "through a third party, so that there would be no direct contact between tobacco company personnel or TAC and the director."^[2]

History

FOREST was officially founded in 1979 by former Air Chief Marshal Sir Christopher Foxley-Norris.

In 1987 Lord Harris of High Cross, general director of the Institute of Economic Affairs (1957-1989), was appointed chairman, a position he held until his death in October 2006. A long-term pipesmoker and an outspoken critic of public smoking bans, Harris wrote numerous articles and essays on the subject of passive smoking.^[3]

FOREST spokesmen appear regularly on television and radio in the United Kingdom and are frequently quoted by British newspapers as representatives of a pro-tobacco viewpoint.^[4][5][6] Despite this media visibility, FOREST's internal communications to the tobacco industry argued that its real successes "cannot be publicised":

Measuring FOREST purely in terms of media coverage denies the existence of other work in which it is engaged but which cannot be publicised. In short, if others can be persuaded to "sing the same tune" this is of more value than anything that might be said by the tobacco industry itself, or FOREST.^[7]

Funding and membership

FOREST has been described as an astroturf group created and primarily funded by the tobacco industry.^[8] Its establishent was planned by the Tobacco Advisory Committee, the British tobacco industry trade association. At a 1979 meeting, the Tobacco Advisory Committee discussed the launch of FOREST as well as ways to maintain its appearance of independence.^[9]

After its founding, grassroots interest in FOREST was meager and failed to make the organization self-financing, despite aggressive membership campaigns.^[2] In one instance, 10,000 cigarette retailers were solicited to join FOREST, but only 4 joined.^[10] Thus, financial support from the tobacco industry remained the major source of funding for FOREST, while funding from outside the industry was minimal.^[2]

Notwithstanding efforts to create the appearance of independence, the Tobacco Advisory Council controlled leadership at FOREST. Internal industry memos stipulated: "If money invested [in FOREST] is to be properly effective then control and management are essential." Contact between the Executive Director of FOREST and the Tobacco Advisory Council was envisaged "on an almost daily basis."^[11]

Recent developments

In recent years FOREST has attracted the support of several high profile smokers including artist David Hockney, inventor Trevor Baylis, musician Joe Jackson, restaurateur and TV chef Antony Worrall Thompson, and Claire Fox, director of the Institute of Ideas. In September 2005 Hockney, Jackson and Fox all spoke at a fringe meeting organised by FOREST at the Labour Party conference in Brighton.

In February 2006, FOREST lost its fight against a total ban on smoking in enclosed public places in England from Summer 2007. This includes all pubs, bars, cafés and restaurants, as well as workplaces and private members clubs. Similar bans have come into force in Northern Ireland (Spring 2007) and Wales (April 2007). Scotland introduced its own public smoking ban in March 2006. Despite this, FOREST says it will continue to fight for freedom of choice. Current slogans include "Smokers are voters, too", "Enough is enough" and "Nanny state? No thanks".

GREENHOUSE

A greenhouse is a structure with a glass or plastic roof and frequently glass or plastic walls; it heats up because incoming solar radiation from the sun warms plants, soil, and other things inside the building. Air warmed by the heat from hot interior surfaces is retained in the building by the roof and wall. These structures range in size from small sheds to very large buildings.

Greenhouses can be divided into glass greenhouses and plastic greenhouses. Plastics mostly used are PEfilm and multiwall sheet in PC or PMMA. Commercial glass greenhouses are often high tech production facilities for vegetables or flowers. The glass greenhouses are filled with equipment like screening installations, heating, cooling, lighting and may be automatically controlled by a computer.

The glass used for a greenhouse works as a selective transmission medium for different spectral frequencies, and its effect is to trap energy within the greenhouse, which heats both the plants and the ground inside it. This warms the air near the ground, and this air is prevented from rising and flowing away. This can be demonstrated by opening a small window near the roof of a greenhouse: the temperature drops considerably. This principle is the basis of the autovent automatic cooling system. Greenhouses thus work by trapping electromagnetic radiation and preventing convection. A miniature greenhouse is known as a cold frame.

Uses

Greenhouses are often used for growing flowers, vegetables, fruits, and tobacco plants. Bumblebees are the pollinators of choice for most greenhouse pollination, although other types of bees have been used, as well as artificial pollination. This helps the plants to produce more offspring for future plantations.

Besides tobacco, many vegetables and flowers are grown in greenhouses in late winter and early spring, and then transplanted outside as the weather warms. Started plants are usually available for gardeners in farmers' markets at transplanting time.

The closed environment of a greenhouse has its own unique requirements, compared with outdoor production. Pests and diseases, and extremes of heat and humidity, have to be controlled, and irrigation is necessary to provide water. Significant inputs of heat and light may be required, particularly with winter production of warm-weather vegetables. Special greenhouse varieties of certain crops, like tomatoes, are generally used for commercial production.

Greenhouses are increasingly important in the food supply of high latitude countries. One of the largest greenhouse complexes in the world is in Almeria, Spain where Greenhouses cover almost 50,000 acres (200 km²) and where almost 5% of Spain's salad vegetables are grown.[1]

Greenhouses protect crops from too much heat or cold, shield plants from dust storms and blizzards, and help to keep out pests. Light and temperature control allows greenhouses to turn inarable land into arable land. Greenhouses can feed starving nations where crops can't survive in the harsh deserts and Arctic wastes. Hydroponics can be used in greenhouses as well to make the most use of the interior space.

Biologist John Todd invented a greenhouse that turns sewage into water, through the natural processes of bacteria, plants, and animals.

History

Cucumbers reached to the ceiling in a greenhouse in Richfield, Minnesota, where market gardeners grew a wide variety of produce for sale in Minneapolis. ca. 1910

19th Century Orangerie in Weilburg, Germany

The idea of growing plants in environmentally controlled areas has existed since Roman times. The Roman emperor Tiberius ate a cucumber-like^[2] vegetable daily. The Roman gardeners used artificial methods (similar to the greenhouse system) of growing to have it available for his table every day of the year. Cucumbers were planted in wheeled carts which were put in the sun daily, then taken inside to keep them warm at night.^[3] The cucumbers were stored under frames or in cucumber houses glazed with either oiled cloth known as "specularia" or with sheets of mica, according to the description by Pliny the Elder.^[4]

The first modern greenhouses were built in Italy in the thirteenth century^[5] to house the exotic plants that explorers brought back from the tropics. They were originally called giardini botanici (botanical gardens). The concept of greenhouses soon spread to the Netherlands and then England, along with the plants. Some of these early attempts required enormous amounts of work to close up at night or to winterize. There were serious problems with providing adequate and balanced heat in these early greenhouses.

Jules Charles, a French botanist, is often credited^[who?] with building the first practical modern greenhouse in Leiden, Holland to grow medicinal tropical plants.^{[citation needed]}

Originally on the estates of the rich, with the growth of the science of botany greenhouses spread to the universities. The French called their first greenhouses orangeries, since they were used to protect orange trees from freezing. As pineapples became popular pineries, or pineapple pits, were built. Experimentation with the design of greenhouses continued during the Seventeenth Century in Europe as technology produced better glass and construction techniques improved. The greenhouse at the Palace of Versailles was an example of their size and elaborateness; it was more than 500 feet long, 42 feet wide, and 45 feet high.

In the nineteenth Century the largest greenhouses were built. The conservatory at Kew Gardens in England is a prime example of the Victorian greenhouse. Although intended for both horticultural and non-horticultural exhibition these included London's Crystal Palace, the New York Crystal Palace and Munich’s Glaspalast. Joseph Paxton, who had experimented with glass and iron in the creation of large greenhouses as the head gardener at Chatsworth, in Derbyshire, working for the Duke of Devonshire, designed and built the first, London's Crystal Palace. A major architectural achievement in monumental greenhouse building were the Royal Greenhouses of Laeken (1874-1895) for King Leopold II of Belgium.

In Japan, the first greenhouse was built in 1880 by Samuel Cocking, a British merchant who exported herbs.

In the Twentieth Century the geodesic dome was added to the many types of greenhouses.

Shadehouse

A shadehouse serves the opposite purpose of a greenhouse; it is used to protect cultivated plants from excessive heat, light or dryness.

Gallery

Victorian conservatory, Kew Gardens

A modern glasshouse in RHS Wisley

A greenhouse in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Greenhouses lighted at night near Amsterdam (seen from an airplane)

BOTANICAL GARDEN

Botanical gardens grow a wide variety of plants primarily to categorize and document for scientific purposes. Botanists and horticulturalists tend the flora and maintain the garden's library and herbarium of dried and documented plant material. Botanical gardens may also serve to entertain and educate the public, upon whom many depend for funding. However, not all botanical gardens are open to the public: for example the Chelsea Physic Garden. According to the Botanic Gardens Conservation International, "Botanic gardens are institutions holding documented collections of living plants for the purposes of scientific research, conservation, display and education."^[1]

Research

From the late 18th century onward, European botanical gardens began sending plant-collecting expeditions to various parts of the world and publishing their findings. Voyages of exploration routinely included botanists for this purpose. Subsequent scientific work studied how these exotic plants might be adapted to grow in the garden's locale, how to classify them, and how to propagate rare or endangered species. The Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, near London, has continuously published journals and more recently catalogues and databases since this time.

Educational work

Educational projects at botanical gardens range from introductions to plants that thrive in different environments to practical advice for the home gardener. Many have plant shops, selling flower, herb, and vegetable seedlings suitable for transplantation. Some gardens such as the UBC Botanical Garden and Centre for Plant Research and the Chicago Botanic Garden have plant breeding programs and introduce new plants to the horticultural trade.

Inside the United States Botanic Garden	Inside Kew Gardens Palm House	The Botanical Garden of Curitiba, Southern Brazil	A botanical garden of Kitchener's Island, Aswan
University of British Columbia Botanical Garden	Inside the Botanical Garden of the University of Coimbra, Portugal	Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney, Australia

History

Inside the Rio de Janeiro Botanic Garden (Brazil), 1890

The first modern botanical gardens were founded in Northern Italy in connection with universities:

• Pisa (1544) by Luca Ghini (1490-1556)
• Padua (1545)
• Florence (1545)
• Bologna (1567)

Other European towns and universities then followed suit:

• Valencia, Spain (1567)
• Leiden, Netherlands (1590)
• Montpellier, France (1593)
• Heidelberg, Germany (1597)
• Tübingen, Germany by Leonhart Fuchs
• Copenhagen, Denmark (1600)
• Oxford, England (1621)
• Uppsala, Sweden (1655)
• Hannover, Germany (1666)

Egypt has several botanical gardens. One them, the Orman Garden in Giza, is over 130 years old.

GEOMORPHOLOGY

Geomorphology (from Greek: γη, ge, "earth"; μορφή, morfé, "form"; and λόγος, logos, "knowledge") is the scientific study of landforms and the processes that shape them. Geomorphologists seek to understand why landscapes look the way they do: to understand landform history and dynamics, and predict future changes through a combination of field observation, physical experiment, and numerical modeling. Geomorphology is practiced within geology, geodesy, geography, archaeology, and civil and environmental engineering. Early studies in geomorphology are the foundation for pedology, one of two main branches of soil science.

Landforms evolve in response to a combination of natural and anthropogenic processes. The landscape is built up through tectonic uplift and volcanism. Denudation occurs by erosion and mass wasting, which produces sediment that is transported and deposited elsewhere within the landscape or off the coast. Landscapes are also lowered by subsidence, either due to tectonics or physical changes in underlying sedimentary deposits. These processes are each influenced differently by climate, ecology, and human activity.

Practical applications of geomorphology include measuring the effects of climate change, hazard assessments including landslide prediction and mitigation, river control and restoration, coastal protection, and assessing the presence of water on Mars.

History

Perhaps the earliest one to devise a theory of geomorphology was the polymath Chinese scientist and statesman Shen Kuo (1031-1095 AD). This was based on his observation of marine fossil shells in a geological stratum of a mountain hundreds of miles from the Pacific Ocean. Noticing bivalve shells running in a horizontal span along the cut section of a cliffside, he theorized that the cliff was once the pre-historic location of a seashore that had shifted hundreds of miles over the centuries. He inferred that the land was reshaped and formed by soil erosion of the mountains and by deposition of silt, after observing strange natural erosions of the Taihang Mountains and the Yandang Mountain near Wenzhou. Furthermore, he promoted the theory of gradual climate change over centuries of time once ancient petrified bamboos were found to be preserved underground in the dry, northern climate zone of Yanzhou, which is now modern day Yan'an, Shaanxi province.

The first geomorphic model was the geographical cycle or the cycle of erosion, developed by William Morris Davis between 1884 and 1899. The cycle was inspired by theories of uniformitarianism which were first formulated by James Hutton (1726-1797). Concerning valley forms, the cycle was depicted as a sequence by which a river would cut a valley more and more deeply, but then erosion of side valleys would eventually flatten out the terrain again, now at a lower elevation. The cycle could be started over by uplift of the terrain. The model is today considered too much of a simplification to be especially useful in practice..

Walther Penck developed an alternative model in the 1920s, based on ratios of uplift and erosion, but it was also too weak to explain a variety of landforms. G. K. Gilbert was an important early American geomorphologist.

Processes

Age of seafloor crust. Red is youngest.

Modern geomorphology focuses on the quantitative analysis of interconnected processes, such as the contribution of solar energy, the rates of steps of the hydrologic cycle, plate movement rates from geophysics to compute the age and expected fate of landforms and the weathering and erosion of the land. The use of more precise measurement technique has also enabled processes like erosion to be observed directly, rather than merely surmised from other evidence. Computer simulation is also valuable for testing that a particular model yields results with properties similar to real terrain.

Primary surface processes responsible for most topographic features include wind, waves, weathering, mass wasting, ground water, surface water, glaciers, tectonism, and volcanism.

Fluvial

Rivers and streams are not only conduits of water, but also of sediment. The water, as it flows over the channel bed, is able to mobilize sediment and transport it downstream, either as bedload, suspended load or dissolved load. The rate of sediment transport depends on the availability of sediment itself and on the river's discharge.

As rivers flow across the landscape, they generally increase in size, merging with other rivers. The network of rivers thus formed is a drainage system and is often dendritic, but may adopt other patterns depending on the regional topography and underlying geology.

See also: Hack's law and Sediment transport

Hillslope

Main article: Mass wasting

Soil, regolith, and rock move downslope under the force of gravity via creep, slides, flows, topples, and falls. Such mass wasting occurs on both terrestrial and submarine slopes, and has been observed on Earth, Mars, and Venus.

Glacial

Glaciers, while geographically restricted, are effective agents of landscape change. The gradual movement of ice down a valley causes abrasion and plucking of the underlying rock. Abrasion produces fine sediment, termed glacial flour. The debris transported by the glacier, when the glacier recedes, is termed a moraine. Glacial erosion is responsible for U-shaped valleys, as opposed to the V-shaped valleys of fluvial origin.

See also: Glacier morphology

Weathering

Main article: Weathering

This results from chemical dissolution of rock and from the mechanical wearing of rock by plant roots, ice expansion, and the abrasive action of sediment. Weathering provides the source of the sediment transported by fluvial, glacial, aeolian, or biotic processes.

Taxonomy

Different geomorphological processes dominate at different spatial and temporal scales. To help categorize landscape scales some geomorphologists use the following taxonomy:

• 1st - Continent, ocean basin, climatic zone (~10,000,000 km²)
• 2nd - Shield, e.g. Baltic shield, or mountain range (~1,000,000 km²)
• 3rd - Isolated sea, Sahel (~100,000 km²)
• 4th - Massif, e.g. Massif Central or Group of related landforms, e.g., Weald (~10,000 km²)
• 5th - River valley, Cotswolds (~1,000 km²)
• 6th - Individual mountain or volcano, small valleys (~100 km²)
• 7th - Hillslopes, stream channels, estuary (~10 km²)
• 8th - gully, barchannel (~1 km²)
• 9th - Meter-sized features