3rd Evaluation

My opinion about "Blade Runner"

It is a future film (I think the year was 2019), where there were replicants. Deckard was a policeman that is going to kill all the replicants, but they have hidden. A replicant want to live more time, but it didn't get it. Deckard have to kill him. They fight and finally Deckar win.

I didn't understand this film so much, but it shows us the futur problems of our consumerism and the pollution. People have mutation too. The attempt of be gods, made that the replicants born. We must recognize our limitations, we can't create live.

Video: "Our home"

This video shows us the actual and futur problems of our planet, most induced by the human activity. I think that we must stop to produce CO2 and throw it into the atmosphere. We must stop to contaminate our rivers, seas and lakes and to kill animals because of the pollution of their habitats. We must stop to cut the forest that provide us the necessary air for live. But we really must respect our planet and all living being.

21 days in the mine

It is a true story of a Spanish woman that started to work on a mine in South America for 21 days. She worked during all the day (12 hours) with a woman miner who works for feed her children (she receive little money). The first day, both women worked all day on a mine. The Spanish one stoped to work in the mine because she didn't endure do this work, instead she helped other women to find the mineral on the remains of the mine. Every day she worked except when they visited a "town" where they spent a lot of money and they buy necesary things like books or shoes. It is a sad story that makes you thing about the luck of live in a developed society. Their living conditions are poor and they have just to survive, but they love themselves, this is all that they need.

My opinion about the orphanages of China

In China, because of the new law of one child, Chinese people started to abandon their babies in orphanages. Most of the babies are girls because their parents thought that is better have a boy than a girl. The orphanages are dirty and without the necesary things for care children. There are places were babies are not cared and they die, this places are called dying rooms. There are no enough personal who attend the children, so most die. This is a true story, that occur nowadays. I think that is a wrong idea have a law of one child because there are other ways for reduce the natality and the population growth. It is a terrible form to reduce the population. It is better raise awareness all people to start to have few child. The orphanages are abandoned, the goverment should help they with more money and people who work on it. If this measures will be enforced, orphans will have a better live in this country.

Developed Nations versus Underdeveloped Nations

Countries are divided into developed or developing according to their Gross National Income (GNI) per capita per year:

Developed countries

A developed country is a sovereign state that has a highly developed economy and advanced technological infrastructure relative to other less developed nations. Most commonly the criteria for evaluating the degree of economic development are gross domestic product (GDP), the per capita income, level of industrialization, amount of widespread infrastructure and general standard of living. Which criteria are to be used and which countries can be classified as being developed are subjects of debate.

Underdeveloped countries

Underdevelopment is when resources are not used to their full socio-economic potential, with the result that local or regional development is slower in most cases than it should be. Furthermore, it results from the complex interplay of internal and external factors that allow less developed countries only a lop-sided development progression. Underdeveloped nations are characterized by a wide disparity between their rich and poor populations, and an unhealthy balance of trade. Symptoms of underdevelopment include lack of access to job opportunities, health care, drinkable water, food, education and housing. 

Factory location influences

• Energy source.
• Water source.
• Distance to get materials for production.
• Distance for workers to drive.
• Enough space.
• Zoning and other laws of the area.
• Near transpot links.

Economic development around the world

Light industry or consumer goods industry

Makes products for direct consumption. Its principal characteristics are the following:

• Consumes fewer raw materials and energy resources tha heavy industry and capital goods industry.
• Is generally less contaminating, but modifies natural space because it is concentrated in specific areas.
• Usually located near cities and transport links.
• Its size can vary a lot.
• There are different types of light industry: food, light chemical products and computing, textiles, etc.

 Food industry

• Transforms and manipulates (refrigerates, packs, etc.) vegetable, meat, fish an diary products. The United States and the Netherlands are some of the principal producers.

Automobile industry

• Manufactures industrial vehicles (lorries, vans, buses, etc) and vehicles for individual use (cars and motorbikes). The main producers are European countries, Japan, the United States, countries from southeast Asia, like South Korea and China.

Light chemical industry

• Manufactures pharmaceutical, photographic, cosmetic products and plastics. France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Italy are some of the main producers.

Electronics and computing industry

• Manufactures equipment like televisions, telephones, computers, multimedia recorders and players (for DVDs and MP3s), cameras and digital video cameras. The United States, some European countries, Japan and the countries from South-Asia are the principal roducers.

Textile industry

• Groups activities like spinning and weaving, making clothes and other articles (rugs, bags, belts, etc). Asian countries, like China, have replaced traditional textile producers, like France, Belgium, the United Kingdom and the Nethelands.

For and against tourism

Pros

• Generates employment in the serice sector.
• Locals may benefit from improved infrastucture and facilities.
• Cultural exchanges between people-leading to gre undrerstanding.
• Profits may leak aboard from the country; the companies involved mey be foreign owned.

Cons

• Attracts people who prey on tourists.
• Some tourists don't respect the places they visit (e.g. yelling in churches, littering, taking pictures of sacred cerimonies without permission).
• It can destroy the enviroment because of the excesive construction of buildings.

miércoles, 19 de junio de 2013

Map of the main international political organizations

Bar chart of the number of internet users in the world

Map of gross domestic product

jueves, 6 de junio de 2013

Map of the main tourist areas

Map of world trade

This is a map of word trade.

Physical map of Africa

Political map of Africa

Oil: for and against

Oil is a type of fossil fuel created naturally and are deposited underneath the earth’s surface. Oil are use to generate energy through a process call combustion to generate heat. All fossil fuels are non-renewable, which mean oil will run out.

Ever since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, Energy from fossil fuels such as oil had been one of the main sources of energy. Oil is widely available, generating energy with oil require direct combustion and the problem is the byproducts of the combustion of oil have a negative impact on the environment.

Oil pros:

• No other energy source can move vehicles with greater speed at longer distances than oil.
• Create jobs for the local economy.
• Use in cars, convert into electricity,plastics, wax, sulfur, asphalt.

Oil cons:

• Oil is non-renewable, which mean it will eventually run out.
• Burning oil pollute the environment by releasing CO2 and other toxic.
• Burning oil releases green house gases, which contribute to global warming.
• Oil companies need to build big oil rigs to extract oil offshore and inshore.
• Oil leaks may occur which result in environmental disaster by killing wild life, disturbing the biodiversity of that area and it take years for cleanup.
• Extracting oil from sand takes a lot of water.
• Drilling for oil is unpredictable; it takes a lot of time to search for oil.
• It is expensive and dangerous to transport oil.

Importance of water

Every living organism needs water to survive. Plants need water to make food. All animals depend on plants for food either directly or indirectly. Therefore without water, all life forms will cease to exist. With the ever increasing population, water is becoming a scarce commodity. To worsen this situation, the few available sources of water for consumption by living organisms are being depleted at an alarming rate. Careless release of wastes into water bodies is also a major problem today. If nothing is done to reverse the situation, then it is predicted that it will be extremely hard to find clean water in future.

It is obvious that direct consumption by plants and animals is top among uses of water. Water has many other important functions such as washing, transportation, recreation, industrial applications, chemical uses, fire extinguishing among other uses. There is no other solvent that can be used to serve all these functions of water. This further stresses the importance of water in life. Without it life will be extremely difficult. Therefore everyone is charged with the responsibility of taking care of water because survival depends on it.

There is a lot that an individual can do to conserve this precious commodity. They all aim at reducing the amount of water wasted every single day.

Crop farming

Farmed crops are a major source of food for human and raw materials for industries. Human has cultivated plants for sustenance ever since. 

In the modern times, these crops are further processed to make substances for various other uses. And due to population increase, new technologies have emerged to enable farmers to grow crops at higher yields, larger size, and with more resistance to pests and insects.

Farms can be run as small family farms of less than 10 acres or as a commercial one with sales of at least $250,000. They could be managed intensively as a small project or run with the latest in farming technology. But just the same, farmers of crops of any size face basically the same forces and challenges.

Crop Farming Yield and Profitability

To make the most out of the land and time resources invested for each crop, every farmer aims to reach the maximum cost effective yield for every crop. Yields are affected by factors such as pests, insects and weeds and by the ability of the soil to nurture the crop. Crop-rotation is often employed to allow the soil to replenish the nutrient consumed by specific crops and to prevent the proliferation of pests and insects.

Crop farming is subject to various forces that constantly change – weather, demand, regulations, and prices. As such, profitability in crop farming is not only a function of yield and costs, but also of these market forces. For a farm to profit, it must adroitly deal with these forces.

Physical factors affecting farming

Climate: 

• Temperature: a minimum temperature of 6°C is needed for crops to grow. The growing season is the number of months the temperature is over 6°C. Different crops need a different growing season, e.g. wheat needs 90 days.

•  Rainfall: all crops and animals need water.

Relief:

• Temperatures decrease 1ºC every 160 metres vertical height.
• Uplands are more exposed to wind and rain. Steep slopes also cause thin soils and limit the use of machinery.

• Exposure to the wind: strong winds can damage crops.
• Lowland areas are more easily farmed.

Soil:

• Crops grow best on deep, fertile, free-draining soils, e.g. the brown earths found in lowland Britain. Less fertile soils prone to water logging are best used for pastoral farming.

Vegetation:

• Vegetation provides the soil with humus, so the more vegetation an area has, the more fertile soil will be.

The farming system

A farming system is defined as a population of individual farm systems that have broadly similar resource bases, enterprise patterns, household livelihoods and constraints, and for which similar development strategies and interventions would be appropriate. Depending on the scale of the analysis, a farming system can encompass a few dozen or many millions of households.
The classification of the farming systems of developing regions has been based on the following criteria:
available natural resource base, including water, land, grazing areas and forest; climate, of which altitude is one important determinant; landscape, including slope; farm size, tenure and organization; and
dominant pattern of farm activities and household livelihoods, including field crops, livestock, trees, aquaculture, hunting and gathering, processing and off-farm activities; and taking into account the main technologies used, which determine the intensity of production and integration of crops, livestock and other activities.

Types of farming.

• Arable farms where the main way of making money is by growing crops
• Livestock farms  where animals are the important part of the farm
• Mixed farms  where animals and crops are both important to the farm