Friday, October 27, 2006
Manhattan
Manhattan refers to both the Island of Manhattan and encompasses most of the Borough of Manhattan, one of the five boroughs of New York City. The commercial, financial, and cultural center of the city, Manhattan has many famous landmarks, tourist attractions, museums and universities. It is also home to the headquarters of the United Nations and the seat of city government.
The borough of Manhattan is coterminous with New York County, which is also the most densely populated county in the United States. Postal addresses within the borough are typically designated as "New York, NY."
Manhattan has the largest central business district in the United States and is the site of most of the city's corporate headquarters and the New York Stock Exchange. Although its population is third largest of the five boroughs, after Brooklyn and Queens, and it is geographically the smallest, Manhattan is the borough that many visitors most closely associate with New York City.
The borough of Manhattan is coterminous with New York County, which is also the most densely populated county in the United States. Postal addresses within the borough are typically designated as "New York, NY."
Manhattan has the largest central business district in the United States and is the site of most of the city's corporate headquarters and the New York Stock Exchange. Although its population is third largest of the five boroughs, after Brooklyn and Queens, and it is geographically the smallest, Manhattan is the borough that many visitors most closely associate with New York City.
Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Desalination
Desalination refers to any of several processes that remove the excess salt and other minerals from water in order to obtain fresh water suitable for animal consumption or irrigation, and if almost all of the salt is removed, for human consumption, sometimes producing table salt as a by-product. Desalination of brackish water is already commonplace in the U.S., where it is used to meet treaty obligations for river water entering Mexico. Indeed, desalination has spread into use in over a hundred countries, with Saudi Arabia accounting for about 24% of total world capacity. Kuwait built the world's first large-scale desalination plant in the 1960s. Kuwait's energy reserves are so great that Kuwait is unique in using desalinated water for agriculture. The world's largest desalination plant is in Ashkelon, Israel. It began operating on August 4, 2005, and it is capable of producing 100 million cubic meters of water per year.
Monday, October 09, 2006
Family planning is often used as a euphemism for birth control, though its connotations are somewhat different. It is most usually applied to the circumstance of a monogamous heterosexual couple who wish to limit their number of children, to control the timing of pregnancy , or both. Inherent in the idea is that the couple does have at least one child, that is, they use birth control to plan, not to prevent, a family.
Family planning may include more or less permanent abstinence, or the marginally effective withdrawal method, or methods of sexual satisfaction other than genital intercourse, More commonly, however, it is considered to be a system that allows a couple to have sexual intercourse on a long-term, regular basis, during which the man normally reaches orgasm and ejaculation in the woman's vagina, while nevertheless sharply and reliably reducing the chance that she will become pregnant until such time as the couple wish. Family planning thus often incorporates methods of birth control that either prevent fertilization or work after fertilization to prevent the implantation of an embryo. The essence of family planning, then, is to make intercourse purely a means of expressing love, building stability in the relationship, and sharing physical pleasure, and not a means of reproducing.