1 Capturing the oil industry The oil industry is perhaps the archetypal globalised industry. Dominated by a few multi-national companies, it is highly centralised at the level of corporate power but, like corporations, investment and trade in the oil industry are also highly mobile. The long reach of the global oil economy is a consequence of the distance between the location of significant oil reserves and the location of the major markets for oil. The reserves of oil currently expected to last more than fifty years are
3.2 By medium We can divide texts up by the medium in which they appear. This is a broad division that is technologically based. It may seem excessively obvious, but it can be quite revealing. For example, different media have different periodicities (frequency of appearances) – most magazines appear weekly or monthly, while newspapers are weekly or daily. Episodes of television programmes are most commonly also weekly or daily, but films appear on a different basis altogether, since, like books or CDs t
Learning outcomes After studying this unit you should be able: read Social Science materials critically and effectively.
Ned Beck's July 4th
Ned Beck continued writing in his diary throughout the summer of 1880, so we have his first-hand account of Holton, Kansas' 4th of July festivities. Holton planned to hold a community picnic on July 3rd, since July 4th fell on Sunday that year, but it was an unusually rainy summer and that Saturday was no exception, so the celebration was somewhat subdued. Just like kids today, Ned's favorite part of the holiday was the fireworks. Here's his description of the events of that week.
Headache 3.2 Poverty as natural/inevitable There is a construction of poverty that identifies it as a necessary feature of social life: some people will be better endowed, try harder or be more successful than others, and inequality will be an inevitable result (see, for example, Herrnstein and Murray, 1994, who argue that low levels of intelligence are the main determinants of poverty in the USA). Interfering with this natural order of things is dangerous, particularly because it prevents poverty acting as a spur to try harder. This 2.5 Representing weights A physical quantity such as weight has the property that it can take on any value, not just a finite set of values. For instance, at one time the ingredients in the scalepan could weigh 29.2569427 grams, at another time 125.1234659 grams, at yet another 2805.87625922 grams. It may not be possible for the scales to display such values, but they are physically possible. Quantities like weight whose values can take on any value in this way are said to be analogue. Figure 3 may help 2.2.3 Positive integers: converting denary numbers to binary If computers encode the denary numbers of the everyday world as binary numbers, then clearly there needs to be conversion from denary to binary and vice versa. You have just seen how to convert binary numbers to denary, because I did a couple of examples to show you how binary numbers ‘work’. But how can denary numbers be converted to binary? I'll show you by means of an example. 10.1 Introduction A stand-alone computer receives data from a user by means of input devices. The two most commonly used input devices are the keyboard and the mouse. A computer sends data to a user by means of output devices. Data may be output via devices such as a screen or a printer. There are many different ways of getting data into a computer. For example, a scanner converts images and texts into a format that can be processed by the computer and displayed on screen. Devices such as t 4.8 Verification You will, perhaps, by now be getting a sense of the challenge of setting up an identification system on a national scale. However, for many routine purposes, establishing who a person is from an entire population of possibilities is not what is required. Instead what is required is confirmation that the person is who they claim to be. This is verification. An example of verification happens when you collect a parcel from a depot. You are sometimes asked to show your driving licence, pa 2.1.1 What's ‘Buy It Now’? 5.1 Transmission of electrical signals on wires In the discussions of newsgathering in the Taylor and Higgins papers, you saw the significance of the development of systems that allowed long-distance transmission of electronic signals. Initially transmission used metallic wires (remember Taylor's reference to the importance of the ‘lines infrastructure’ and his mention of the ‘wire picture’) and later wireless transmission (terrestrial and satellite microwave) became important. In this section I shall look at some aspects of the tr References 6.9 Alternatives to the main success scenario If a use case incorporates a scenario that is significantly different from the main success scenario, you may decide to create a new subsidiary use case. There may even be a need to create more than one subsidiary, depending on what happens in different circumstances. For example, when making a reservation in a typical hotel the receptionist would first determine whether the guest was already known to the hotel (among other advantages, this would speed up the reservation process since re-ente 3.4.1 A computer system is the combination of: the computer (with its processor and storage); other equipment such as a scanner or printer, the software programs that make it all work (software programs that are designed to help with some human task are often referred to as applications). What is language?: an applied linguistic perspective 1 Preamble The mathematical skills assumed by Open University courses in the Faculty of Mathematics and Computing, Faculty of Science and Faculty of Technology, vary greatly from course to course. Students are strongly recommended to start by reading the Sciences Good Study Guide (ISBN 0 7492 341 1 3) as preparation for whichever course they are going to study. This guide is an excellent place to start but you may have found that the section on maths does not go far enough for you. Equally, y 4.2 Analysing the task This involves you in analysing both the learning task, (e.g. working through the text, other readings, calculations, experiments) as well as the assessed task (e.g. the assignment). It is important to work out from the start just what this part of the course requires you to do as well as to know. 4.1 Preparing In the preparation phase you should pause before starting a new section of work and think about it as a whole. What needs to be covered? What are the various components of this block of work? What are the learning objectives or outcomes? What will you need to know and be able to do at the end of it? What is required in the assignment? There are two main activities during this phase, both directly related to your course work and assignment: 3.1 Introduction to applying your learning In this part of the unit we invite you to apply some of the ideas we have introduced in a more structured way. One of the easiest ways to really understand learning how to learn as a process, rather than as a series of individual activities, is to apply it to a section of the course you are currently studying. Choose a section that is complete in itself - for example, a block of the course - and that leads to an assignment. We suggest that you read through the whole of this section and
This free course, What is language?: an applied linguistic perspective, serves as an introduction to the discipline of applied linguistics. It examines what is meant by 'language', what its main characteristics are, and how human language differs from communication between other animals. It also asks whether theoretical knowledge about language can be applied to professional practice.Author(s):
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