Definition
What is Microcredit?
Much of the current interest in microcredit stems from the Microcredit Summit (2-4 February 1997), and the activities that went into organizing the event. The definition of microcredit that was adopted there was:
Microcredit (mI-[*]Kro'kre-dit); noun; programmes extend small loans to very poor people for self-employment projects that generate income, allowing them to care for themselves and their families.
Definitions deffer, of course, from country to country. Some of the defining criteria used include- size - loans are micro, or very small in size target users - microenterpreneurs and low-income households utilization - the use of funds - for income generation, and enterprise development, but also for community use (health/education) etc. terms and conditions - most terms and conditions for microcredit loans are flexible and easy to understand, and suited to the local conditions of the community.
Source : The Virtual Library on Microcredit
Social impact of microcredit:
Since the 1990s, alleviating poverty has been the top priority in international development. Within this framework, various initiatives have already been taken. One particular strategy in tackling poverty that has caught the attention of many aid donors and nongovernment organizations (NGOs) is the provision of small loans through microcredit programs. Bangladesh, one of the poorest countries in the world, is the cradle of this "microcredit movement." Grameen Bank, ASA, BRAC,PROSHIKA,SHOKTI etc enjoys international fame, and there model has been replicated in countries all over the world. They have generated an international wave of interest and have been the main source of inspiration for the Microcredit Movement.
Grameen Bank, BRAC and ASA have received a lot of attention not only from development agents but also from academics. They have been criticized for their neoliberal developmentalism, (1) their social control and disciplinary imperatives, (2) and the subsidized system of lending that they apply. (3) Others look at them from the perspectives of a growing space for civil society, (4) or the emergence of a social economy, or a third sector. (5) The question of whether these three organizations truly improve the situation of their members in a sustainable way has also been discussed intensively.
Impact assessment is all too frequently discussed in a purely economic sense. In recent years, more researchers are concentrating on the social impact of microcredit institutions. Since Grameen Bank, BRAC, ASA prefer female members to male members, we first assess the social impact on the lives of women. Later, the broader impact of these institutions on the society will be examined.
With patriarchal norms being strictly observed in Bangladesh, it is not easy for a microcredit institution to reach women. Purdah--female seclusion--confines women to the homestead and makes contact with men outside the family unacceptable. Education for girls is considered unnecessary. Dowries are paid, and women have to make sure that their husbands do not leave them. Women are not supposed to have any income independent of their husbands. It is obvious that under these conditions, females attending meetings with male leaders and being in control of finances are aspects of microcredit programs that violate patriarchal values.
Although female members are difficult to reach, it is important to involve them in development projects. Because a woman has to stay at home, she is confronted with poverty more than a man. She has to feed the children, and if there is a lack of food, she eats less. Further, Sen, using the term women's agency, indicates that women cannot merely be passive recipients of aid: They have to be actively involved in improving their lives.
Sen is convinced that women can take part in household decision making and improve their status considerably if they contribute to family income. It is in this field that the microcredit program of Grameen Bank, BRAC, ASA can contribute to women's emancipation. Combined with a social program of skills training, education, and social awareness, microcredit not only improves the situation of women but may also positively affect the entire family.
The main benefits women derive from participating in microcredit programs are:
* Greater involvement in income-earning activities
* Increase in awareness about social, economic, and health related issues
* Increase in the adoption of family-planning methods
* Increase in girls' education and school-enrollment rates
IMPORTANCE OF THE CULTURE OF SCIENCE
One clear outcome from any study of science and civilization is the realization how closely the two have become linked over time. Our civilization today could not have been built without the achievements of science, and science could not have achieved what it did without being driven by the needs of civilization and being supported by its infrastructure.
The public perception of the role of science varied greatly over time. As an activity controlled by the ruling classes’ science has always found a mixed reception with the common people. Its potential use for the improvement of the human condition has always been recognized, particularly in medicine in technological applications. But common people also experienced science in the form of weapons of war and machinery to extract more labor out of men, women and children and rarely benefited from the medical knowledge that accumulated in the households of the nobles. It cannot come as a surprise that ordinary people mostly saw science as something alien to their daily lives at best and potentially threatening at worst. Degradation of the environment, changes in the Earth's climate, proliferation of land mines, overfishing of the oceans - would these developments have occurred without advances in science? It is a fair question to ask. To answer it let us begin by looking back over the 5000 years we have covered. The timeline of civilizations had shown us that civilizations evolved and disappeared or were transformed into others. A timeline of science does not display the same structure; it shows continuity because scientific knowledge accumulates over time, although some losses do occur and are only recovered centuries later. It also shows a tremendous acceleration of the increase in scientific knowledge: It took some 2400 years from the invention of the script and number systems to the separation of religion and science in Greece around 600 BC, another 2400 years to the separation of science and philosophy and the scientific revolution in physics during the Enlightenment, but only three steps of 100 years each to the scientific revolutions in chemistry, biology and geology.
Some sectors are given bellow:
ELECTRONICS
Electronics is a branch of science and technology that deals with the flow of electrons through nonmetallic conductors, mainly semiconductors such as silicon. It is distinct from electrical science and technology, which deal with the flow of electrons and other charge carriers through metal conductors such as copper. This distinction started around 1906 with the invention by Lee De Forest of the triode. Until 1950 this field was called "radio technology" because its principal application was the design and theory of radio transmitters, receivers and vacuum tubes.
Hitachi J100 adjustable frequency Laser Tweezers
Drive chassis.
Electricity
The Off-the-Shelf Sun Booster /// Solar Concentrator By using turbine system produces electricity
At present, solar power has a hard time competing with fossil-fuel equivalents, but a team of students led by freshly minted MIT graduate Spencer Ahrens is working to bring costs down with a solar concentrator—essentially a 12-foot network of shiny mirrors—that boosts the sun's intensity by up to 1,000 times, producing 10,000 watts of heat and, eventually, 3,500 watts of electricity.
What's more, they're doing it with cheap, off-the-shelf parts and simple mechanics: Their device tracks the sun with an elegant array of electric motors triggered by baffled photocells—almost like a sundial. When the cells drift into shadow, motors whirr and rotate the contraption until it's once again perfectly aligned.
"It's basically just a big set of mirrors on a stick—just holding a mirror up to the sun," Ahrens says. "Our design mantra is basically to use commodity materials to make it as low-cost as possible so that it really can make a huge impact without all these government subsidies."
Communication:
The iPhone 3G Killer /// Locale Bridge
Imagine this: You walk into your office, and your cellphone knows to forward calls to your desk. You go to the movies, and your phone automatically switches off its ringer. This, essentially, is the gist of Locale, a program for Google's open-source Android mobile platform that harnesses your phone's built-in GPS to control what it does based on where it's located.
Written by MIT seniors Carter Jernigan, Christina Wright and Jasper Lin, along with sophomore Clare Bayle, the software has already won $25,000 of the $10 million put up by Google to spur development for the platform, which is impressive considering nobody outside Google has yet seen a phone that runs it. (Apple just released its iPhone 3G with built-in GPS, and the war will certainly be on to keep pace.)
"I think it would be hard to call it 1.0 until there's actual phones available, but what we're doing for the next release is going to be really solid," Jernigan says. Due by the end of July, the next version will be eligible for up to $275,000. Phones running Android, or "gPhones," should hit markets later this year.
Science and the Industrial Revolution
Some of the greatest changes were in the area of technology, in the development of new sources of energy and their application in transportation, communications, and industry. Among the important aspects of the Industrial Revolution were the invention of the steam engine by James Watt and its use in factories, mines, ships, and railroad engines; the development of the internal-combustion engine and the companion growth of petroleum technology to provide fuel for it; the invention of many different kinds of agricultural machinery and the resulting enormous increase in productivity; the improvement of many metallurgical processes, particularly those involving iron and steel; and the invention of the electric generator, electric motor, and numerous electric devices that are now commonplace.
Watt steam engine, the steam engine fuelled primarily by coal that propelled the Industrial Revolution in Britain and the world.
Automatic Welding machine
Agriculture:
Irrigation wheels spraying water and various equipment
In the sector of agriculture we can sat that. In the recent time agricultural technology is upgrade day by day. If we see the photo we can easily understand that there is a massive revelation in the agriculture. It has become to possible to discover various types of agricultural equipment, for cultivation of land, pump for irrigation, spray machine for spraying medicine, insecticides and many other things like them. In the same way, horticulture, animal protection, rayon cultivation, bee cultivation, lac cultivation, pisiculture etc. have expanded. . Agriculture encompasses many subjects, including aquaculture, agronomy, animal husbandry, and horticulture. Each of these subjects can be further partitioned: for example, agronomy includes both sustainable agriculture and intensive farming, and animal husbandry includes ranching, herding, and intensive pig farming. Agricultural products include food (vegetables, fruits, and cereals), fibers (cotton, wool, hemp, silk and flax), fuels (methane from biomass, ethanol, biodiesel), cut flowers, ornamental and nursery plants, tropical fish and birds for the pet trade, both legal and illegal drugs (biopharmaceuticals, tobacco, marijuana, opium, cocaine), and other useful materials such as resins.
Transport:
In the 21st century we see radical change in the transport sector. It has been possible to distribute the goods everywhere swiftly because of advanced transport system. Most of the country import latest car or any kind of transport serves every time. New generation always try to upgrade themselves. They are try to use the latest car in every time. The first purpose built railway line opened between Manchester and Liverpool in 1830, the Rocket locomotive of Robert Stephenson being one of the first working locomotives used on the line. Telegraphy also developed into a practical technology in the 19th century to help run the railways safely.
Electric Train Titanic 2 (U.S.A)
Medicine technology
Ronald Munson, in his essay “Why Medicine is not a Science,” argues that although medicine may be scientific it is not a science. He provides three main arguments to support his claim and it these arguments that I will focus on primarily to assess whether his claim is successful. I will also supplement his third argument that surrounds the reducibility of medicine to science with arguments from Kenneth Schaffer who provides a slightly different argument to Munson. Ultimately I will attempt to show that Munson’s claim is partially successful in that medicine cannot currently be classed as a science but that his claim that it can never be a science is not necessarily the case. Medicine is the art and science of healing. It encompasses a range of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness. Contemporary medicine applies health science, biomedical research, and medical technology to diagnose and treat injury and disease, typically through medication, surgery, or some other form of therapy. The word medicine is derived from the Latin arts medicine, meaning the art of healing.
Rainbow tubes Automatic Pool machine
Spaceship, Internet and satellite
Spaceship:
. Klingon Bird of Prey (Star Trek series) - Birds of Prey never seem to fare very well against Federation starships, but their winged shape makes them one of the more killer designs in the pantheon of filmed spacecraft. Too bad about the bare-bones interiors, though. Throw in some comfy leather chairs and you've got the Ferrari of spaceships. Bonus points for the kickin' cloaking device. (Whoops: Sorry, the whales were on one of these guys, not the Enterprise... thanks emailers.)
6. Discovery One (2001: A Space Odyssey) - This massive, pencil-like ship is designed for long-range exploration, features three EVA pods for single-user exploration, a centrifuge where artificial gravity is created, and an, er, slightly buggy computer system, the HAL 9000. Despite the tech trouble, HAL's unblinking red eye is hypnotically awesome.
Internet
Internet is a little used tennis term dating back to when tennis was played by Viking oarsmen to fill the time between battles. As most of you know, Vikings would use their oars as a makeshift racquet, and when the flaming ball of goat entrails was hit through the horned helmet of the lead oarsman, an Internet was claimed. The value of an Internet is roughly the same as a let in the modern game of tennis.
Hope this helps
Robert
Satellite
The Earth is approximately a sphere; therefore its centre of mass is in the centre of the Earth.
Newton's equations defining the force of gravity between 2 objects, define the distance between the objects as the distance between the centres of mass of the 2 objects.
Therefore to calculate the force that keeps a satellite in orbit (gravity) you need to know the distance between the satellite and the centre of the Earth.
I hope this helps, for more information see the website below:
Conclusion
The story of science as story suggests that science can and should serve three distinctive functions for humanity: providing stories that may increase (but never guarantee) human well-being, serving as a supportive nexus for human exploration and storytelling in general, and exemplifying a commitment to skepticism and a resulting open-ended and continuing exploration of what might yet be. Some practical considerations that would further the development and acceptance of such a story of science as a widely shared nexus of human activity are described. Modern science holds out a number of promises, as well as a number of problems. In the foreseeable future researchers may solve the riddle of life and create life itself in a test tube. Most diseases may be brought under control. Science is also working toward control over the environment, e.g., dispersing hurricanes before they can endanger life or property. New sources of energy are being developed, and these together with the capacity to manipulate alien environments may make life possible on the moon or other planets.
Among the challenges faced by modern science are practical ones such as the production and distribution of enough energy to meet increased demands and the elimination or reduction of pollutants in the environment. Some of these problems are political and sociological as well as scientific, as are such problems as control over nuclear and other forms of weapons (biological, chemical) and regulation of the use of computers and other electronic devices that may seriously infringe on individual privacy and freedom. Some have profound ethical implications, e.g., those associated with gene manipulation, organ transplantation, and the capacity to sustain life beyond the point at which it once would have ended. There are also philosophical problems raised by science, as in the uncertainty principle of the quantum theory, which places an absolute limit on the accuracy of certain physical measurements and thus on the predictions that may be made on the basis of such measurements; in the quantum theory itself, with its suggestion that at the atomic level much depends on chance; and in certain paradoxical discoveries in mathematics and mathematical logic. Even a detailed account of the history of science cannot be complete, for scientific activity is not isolated but takes place within a larger matrix that also includes, for example, political and social events, developments in the arts, philosophy, and religion, and forces within the life of the individual scientist. In other words, science is a human activity and is affected by all that affects human beings in any way.
Source(s):
http://science.howstuffworks.com/questio...
http://science.howstuffworks.com/satelli...
http://www.electricityforum.com/types-electricity.html
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