IDENTIFY AND DISCUSS THE CAUSES OF YOUTH RESTIVENESS IN A PARTICULAR COMMUNITY IN NIGERIA.

IDENTIFY AND DISCUSS THE CAUSES OF YOUTH RESTIVENESS IN A PARTICULAR COMMUNITY IN NIGERIA.
INTRODUCTION
The words ‘youth’ and ‘restiveness’ have become so commonly used together in the last couple of years that it seems to have taken on a life of its own. In the last decade and more there has been a proliferation of cases all over the country and indeed the world, of youth agitations which have tons of people dead and valuable infrastructure as well as personal properties lost and destroyed.
A sustained protestation embarked upon to enforce a desired outcome from a constituted authority by an organised body of youths, fits the label of youth restiveness. It is also a combination of any action or conduct that constitutes unwholesome, socially unacceptable activities engaged in by the youths in any community.
It is a phenomenon which in practice has led to a near breakdown of law and order, low productivity due to disruption of production activities, increasing crime rate, intra-ethnic hostilities, and harassment of prospective developers and other criminal tendencies.
This scourge has been around for a long time and it looks as though it is defying solutions. Maybe the question that needs to be asked is what is truly responsible for this expression of dissatisfaction by the youth? Have their complaints over the years not been heard or attended to? Is there more to the killings and destruction than just drawing attention to the needs they want met? Are the youths trying to draw society’s attention to themselves more than the issues they appear to be fronting? These and more are the questions we would try to tackle head on today.
In Nigeria for instance, the Niger Delta region which is unarguably the bedrock of the oil industry in Nigeria permeated the news for a lengthy period of time as the youths of that region tried various means of getting government and oil companies to pay attention to their dire conditions of living and alleviate their sufferings since according to them, the resources which is building the nation is flowing from their land so by virtue of that they should also be partakers of its benefits.
This strife led to a rise in kidnapping and vandalization of oil pipelines as well as other vices that were being perpetrated. After a period of …. Years, the Nigerian government intervened and the Amnesty program was created to help deliver some of the promises which government had made to the youths in those areas.
The baton was soon handed over to the Eastern Nigeria. Increase in the rate of armed robbery attacks, kidnappings as well as unbridled thuggery became the order of the day.
Today the Northern part of Nigeria has literally erupted with unrivalled violence. Bomb blasts, kidnaps and killings of Nigerians and others have become the prevailing trend. Despite beefing up of security in these areas, the problems still looms. This situation begs the questions, ‘’what is the government of the day willing to do to put a permanent end to these problems.
CAUSES OF YOUTH RESTIVENESS IN MY COMMUNITY
A number of studies have identified factors responsible for youth restiveness. Elegbeleye (2005) identifies three major factors: the peer motivated excitement of being a student, the jingoistic pursuit of patriotic ideas, and perceived victimization arising from economic exploitation.
Another study carried out in Niger Delta region by Ofem and Ajayi (2008) identified lack of humanitarian and social welfare, lack of good governance, corrupt practices of government officials, inadequate training programmes, unemployment, inadequate recreational facilities, lack of quality education, and so on, as the reasons for incessant youth restiveness. This implies that catalogues of closely-related factors are responsible for youth restiveness.
1. Bad Governance
Good governance is required for the growth and development of any nation. Unfortunately, in Nigeria bad governance is more common than good, resulting in disjointed development. The World Bank (1992) identifies the main characteristics of bad governance to include:
• failure to properly distinguish between what is public and what is private, leading to private appropriation of otherwise public resources;
• inability to establish a predictable frame work for law and government behaviour in a manner conducive to development, or arbitrariness in the application of laws and rules;
• excessive rules, regulations, licensing requirement and so forth which impede the functioning of markets and encourage rent-seeking;
• priorities that are inconsistent with development, thereby resulting in misallocation of national resources; and
• exceedingly narrow base for, or non-transparent, decision making.
These and more are the features of most administration in Nigeria. For instance, Onyekpe (2007) observes that successive administrations in Nigeria have not allocated much to the needs of the youth, and, worse still, the meager allocation are often diverted by government officials to their private accounts and projects. Thus, youth are restive and agitated when they perceive that resources meant for them are being wasted by those in authority.
2. Unemployment
Unemployment is a hydra-headed monster which exists among the youth in all developing countries. Experts believe that the number of jobless youth is twice as high as official estimate. Ozohu-Suleiman (2006) notes Nigerian youth are trapped by unemployment. Zakaria (2006) believes that “the rising tide of unemployment and the fear of a bleak future among the youth in African countries have made them vulnerable to the manipulations of agents’ provocateurs”. These include aggrieved politicians, religious demagogues, and greedy multinationals that employ these youths to achieve their selfish ambitions. Zakaria (2006) strongly believes that the absence of job opportunities in developing countries is responsible for youth restiveness with disastrous consequences.
3. Poverty
Poverty connotes inequality and social injustice and this traumatizes the poor. More than 70 percent of people in Nigeria are in abject poverty, living below the poverty line, and one- third survive on less than US $1 dollar a day (Zakaria, 2006). This figure includes an army of youth in urban centres in Nigeria who struggle to eke out a living by hawking chewing sticks, bottled water, handkerchiefs, belts, etc. The sales-per-day and the profit margin on such goods are so small that they can hardly live above the poverty line. Disillusioned, frustrated, and dejected, they seek an opportunity to express their anger against the state. Aworawo (2000) and Zakaria (2006) agreed that there is a link among poverty, loss of livelihood, inequality, and youth restiveness as evidenced by the numerous violent protests against the wielders of power in Nigeria.
4. Inadequate Educational Opportunities and Resources
Quality education has a direct bearing on national prestige, greatness, and cohesion. The knowledge and skill that young people acquire help determine their degree of patriotism and contribution to national integration and progress. Between 2000 and 2004, about 30 percent of Nigerian youth between 10 and 24 were not enrolled in secondary school (Population Reference Bureau, 2006). Perhaps the prohibitive cost of acquiring education is responsible.
The aftereffect of this situation is that thousands of young people roam the streets in cities in Nigeria. Those who manage to complete secondary school have no opportunities for tertiary education. Having being denied the chance to reach their potential, they are disorientated and readily available for antisocial actions (Onyekpe, 2007).
Worse still, some who struggle to enroll in various educational institutions drop out due to lack of basic learning facilities. This situation is attributable to the dwindling resources of government at both federal and state levels as a result of an economic meltdown.
5. Lack of Basic Infrastructure
Most rural communities and urban slums in Nigeria have no access to potable water, health facilities, electricity, communication facilities, industries and commercial facilities, etc. Behind social unrest and youth restiveness in the country is the agitation for equitable distribution of resources.
6. Inadequate Communication and Information flow
Communication creates room for sharing information. It helps people express their thoughts and feelings, clarify problems, and consider alternative ways of coping or adapting to their situation. Such sharing promotes social cohesion.
People must have access to communication facilities, to communicate with the people making the decisions that affect them. Sadly, rarely do people in Nigeria participate in decision-making processes on issues that affect their lives. Ifidon and Ahiauzu (2005), in their study of Niger Delta, revealed that inadequate communication and information flow is one factor responsible for youth restiveness in the area.

REFERENCES
Ajegbomogun, F.O. (2008). Information availability and the extent of use in public library, Abeokuta. Borno Library, Archival, and Information Science Journal 7 (1): 65-74.
Amorawo, D. (2000). Mal-distribution and poverty as factors in the crisis of the Nigeria state. The Constitution: A Journal of Constitutional Development 1 (2): 1-13.
Curras, E. (1987). Information as a fifth vital element and its influence on the culture of the people. Journal of Information Science 13 (3): 27-36.
Echezona, R.I. (2007). The role of libraries in information dissemination for conflict resolution, peace promotion, and reconciliation. African Journal of Libraries, Archives, and Information Science 17 (2): 143-152.
Elegbeleye, O.S. (2005). Recreational facilities in schools: A panacea for youths’ restiveness. Journal of Human Ecology 18 (2): 93-98.
Federal Government of Nigeria (2001). National Youth Policy. Available: http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/docs/policy /national _ youth _ policy.pdf
Ifidon, S.E., & Ahiauzu, B. (2005). Information and conflict prevention in the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria. African Journal of Libraries, Archives, and Information Science 15 (2): 125-132.
Ndagana, B.L., & Ogunrombi, S.A. (2006). Blazing the trial in poverty alleviation among students in Nigeria: The Federal University of Technology, Yola. Library Philosophy and Practice 9 (1). Available: http://unllib.unl.edu/LPP/ndagana.htm
Ofem, N.I., & Ajayi A.R. (2008). Effects of youth empowerment strategies on conflict resolutions in the Niger Delta of Nigeria: Evidence from Cross River State. Journal of Agriculture and Rural Development 6 (1,2): 139-146.

GROUP DYNAMICS

GROUP DYNAMICS
INTRODUCTION
Group dynamics is a system of behaviors and psychological processes occurring within a social group (intragroup dynamics), or between social groups (intergroup dynamics). The study of group dynamics can be useful in understanding decision-making behavior, tracking the spread of diseases in society, creating effective therapy techniques, and following the emergence and popularity of new ideas and technologies. Group dynamics are at the core of understanding racism, sexism, and other forms of social prejudice and discrimination. These applications of the field are studied in psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science, epidemiology, education, social work, business, and communication studies.
HISTORY OF GROUP DYNAMICS
The history of group dynamics (or group processes) has a consistent, underlying premise: ‘the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.’ A social group is an entity, which has qualities that cannot be understood just by studying the individuals that make up the group. In 1924, Gestalt psychologist, Max Wertheimer identified this fact, stating ‘There are entities where the behavior of the whole cannot be derived from its individual elements nor from the way these elements fit together; rather the opposite is true: the properties of any of the parts are determined by the intrinsic structural laws of the whole’ (Wertheimer 1924, p. 7)
As a field of study, group dynamics has roots in both psychology and sociology. Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920), credited as the founder of experimental psychology, had a particular interest in the psychology of communities, which he believed possessed phenomena (human language, customs, and religion) that could not be described through a study of the individual. On the sociological side, Émile Durkheim (1858–1917), who was influenced by Wundt, also recognized collective phenomena, such as public knowledge. Other key theorists include Gustave Le Bon (1841–1931) who believed that crowds possessed a ‘racial unconscious’ with primitive, aggressive, and antisocial instincts, and William McDougall (psychologist), who believed in a ‘group mind,’ which had a distinct existence born from the interaction of individuals.
Ultimately, it was social psychologist Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) who coined the term group dynamics to describe the positive and negative forces within groups of people. In 1945, he established The Group Dynamics Research Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the first institute devoted explicitly to the study of group dynamics. Throughout his career, Lewin was focused on how the study of group dynamics could be applied to real-world, social issues.
An increasing amount of research has applied evolutionary psychology principles to group dynamics. Humans are argued to have evolved in an increasingly complicated social environment and to have many adaptations concerned with group dynamics. Examples include mechanisms for dealing with status, reciprocity, identifying cheaters, ostracism, altruism, group decision, leadership, and intergroup relations.
KEY THEORISTS OF GROUP DYNAMICS
Gustave Le Bon
Gustave Le Bon was a French social psychologist whose seminal study, The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind (1896) led to the development of group psychology.
William McDougall
The British psychologist William McDougall in his work The Group Mind (1920) researched the dynamics of groups of various sizes and degrees of organization.
Sigmund Freud
In Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, (1922), Sigmund Freud based his preliminary description of group psychology on Le Bon’s work, but went on to develop his own, original theory, related to what he had begun to elaborate in Totem and Taboo. Theodor Adorno reprised Freud’s essay in 1951 with his Freudian Theory and the Pattern of Fascist Propaganda, and said that “It is not an overstatement if we say that Freud, though he was hardly interested in the political phase of the problem, clearly foresaw the rise and nature of fascist mass movements in purely psychological categories.”
Jacob L. Moreno
Jacob L. Moreno was a psychiatrist, dramatist, philosopher and theoretician who coined the term “group psychotherapy” in the early 1930s and was highly influential at the time.
Kurt Lewin
Kurt Lewin (1943, 1948, 1951) is commonly identified as the founder of the movement to study groups scientifically. He coined the term group dynamics to describe the way groups and individuals act and react to changing circumstances. Group dynamics can be defined as a field of enquiry dedicated to the advancing knowledge about the nature of groups, the laws of their development and their interrelations with individuals, other groups and larger institutions. Based on their feelings and emotions, members of a group form a common perception. The interactive psychological relationship in which members of a group form this common perception is actually “Group Dynamics”.

William Schutz
William Schutz (1958, 1966) looked at interpersonal relations from the perspective of three dimensions: inclusion, control, and affection. This became the basis for a theory of group behavior that sees groups as resolving issues in each of these stages in order to be able to develop to the next stage. Conversely, a group may also devolve to an earlier stage if unable to resolve outstanding issues in a particular stage. He referred to these group dynamics as “the interpersonal underworld” because they dealt with group processes that were largely unseen, as opposed to “content” issues, which were nominally the agenda of group meetings.
Wilfred Bion
Wilfred Bion (1961) studied group dynamics from a psychoanalytic perspective, and stated that he was much influenced by Wilfred Trotter for whom he worked at University College Hospital London, as did another key figure in the Psychoanalytic movement, Ernest Jones. He discovered several mass group processes which involved the group as a whole adopting an orientation which, in his opinion, interfered with the ability of a group to accomplish the work it was nominally engaged in. His experiences are reported in his published books, especially Experiences in Groups. The Tavistock Institute has further developed and applied the theory and practices developed by Bion.
Bruce Tuckman
Bruce Tuckman (1965) proposed the four-stage model called Tuckman’s Stages for a group. Tuckman’s model states that the ideal group decision-making process should occur in four stages:
• Forming (pretending to get on or get along with others)
• Storming (letting down the politeness barrier and trying to get down to the issues even if tempers flare up)
• Norming (getting used to each other and developing trust and productivity)
• Performing (working in a group to a common goal on a highly efficient and cooperative basis)
Tuckman later added a fifth stage for the dissolution of a group called adjourning. (Adjourning may also be referred to as mourning, i.e. mourning the adjournment of the group). This model refers to the overall pattern of the group, but of course individuals within a group work in different ways. If distrust persists, a group may never even get to the norming stage.
M. Scott Peck
M. Scott Peck developed stages for larger-scale groups (i.e., communities) which are similar to Tuckman’s stages of group development. Peck describes the stages of a community as:
• Pseudo-community
• Chaos
• Emptiness
• True Community
Communities may be distinguished from other types of groups, in Peck’s view, by the need for members to eliminate barriers to communication in order to be able to form true community. Examples of common barriers are: expectations and preconceptions; prejudices; ideology, counterproductive norms, theology and solutions; the need to heal, convert, fix or solve and the need to control. A community is born when its members reach a stage of “emptiness” or peace.
Richard Hackman
Richard Hackman developed a synthetic, research-based model for designing and managing work groups. Hackman suggested that groups are successful when they satisfy internal and external clients, develop capabilities to perform in the future, and when members find meaning and satisfaction in the group. Hackman proposed five conditions that increase the chance that groups will be successful. These include:
1. Being a real team: which results from having a shared task, clear boundaries which clarify who is inside or outside of the group, and stability in group membership.
2. Compelling direction: which results from a clear, challenging, and consequential goal?
3. Enabling structure: which results from having tasks which have variety, a group size that is not too large, talented group members who have at least moderate social skill, and strong norms that specify appropriate behavior?
4. Supportive context: that occurs in groups nested in larger groups (e.g. companies). In companies, supportive contexts involves a) reward systems that reward performance and cooperation (e.g. group based rewards linked to group performance), b) an educational system that develops member skills, c) an information and materials system that provides the needed information and raw materials (e.g. computers).
5. Expert coaching: which occurs on the rare occasions when group members feels they need help with task or interpersonal issues. Hackman emphasizes that many team leaders are overbearing and undermine group effectiveness.
INTRAGROUP DYNAMICS
Intragroup dynamics (also referred to as ingroup-, within-group, or commonly just ‘group dynamics’) are the underlying processes that give rise to a set of norms, roles, relations, and common goals that characterize a particular social group. Examples of groups include religious, political, military, and environmental groups, sports teams, work groups, and therapy groups. Amongst the members of a group, there is a state of interdependence, through which the behaviors, attitudes, opinions, and experiences of each member are collectively influenced by the other group members. In many fields of research, there is an interest in understanding how group dynamics influence individual behavior, attitudes, and opinions.
GROUP FORMATION
Group formation starts with a psychological bond between individuals. The social cohesion approach suggests that group formation comes out of bonds of interpersonal attraction. In contrast, the social identity approach suggests that a group starts when a collection of individuals perceive that they share some social category (‘smokers’, ‘nurses,’ ‘students,’ ‘hockey players’), and that interpersonal attraction only secondarily enhances the connection between individuals. Additionally, from the social identity approach, group formation involves both identifying with some individuals and explicitly not identifying with others. So to say, a level of psychological distinctiveness is necessary for group formation. Through interaction, individuals begin to develop group norms, roles, and attitudes which define the group, and are internalized to influence behavior.
Emergent groups arise from a relatively spontaneous process of group formation. For example, in response to a natural disaster, an emergent response group may form. These groups are characterized as having no preexisting structure (e.g. group membership, allocated roles) or prior experience working together. Yet, these groups still express high levels of interdependence and coordinate knowledge, resources, and tasks.
GROUP MEMBERSHIP AND SOCIAL IDENTITY
The social group is a critical source of information about individual identity.[18] An individual’s identity (or self-concept) has two components: personal identity and social identity (or collective self). One’s personal identity is defined by more idiosyncratic, individual qualities and attributes. In contrast, one’s social identity is defined by his or her group membership, and the general characteristics (or prototypes) that define the group and differentiate it from others. We naturally make comparisons between our own group and other groups, but we do not necessarily make objective comparisons. Instead, we make evaluations that are self-enhancing, emphasizing the positive qualities of our own group (see ingroup bias). In this way, these comparisons give us a distinct and valued social identity that benefits our self-esteem. Our social identity and group membership also satisfies a need to belong. Of course, individuals belong to multiple groups. Therefore, one’s social identity can have several, qualitatively distinct parts (for example, one’s ethnic identity, religious identity, and political identity).
Optimal distinctiveness theory suggests that individuals have a desire to be similar to others, but also a desire to differentiate themselves, ultimately seeking some balance of these two desires (to obtain optimal distinctiveness). For example, one might imagine a young teenager in the United States who tries to balance these desires, not wanting to be ‘just like everyone else,’ but also wanting to ‘fit in’ and be similar to others. One’s collective self may offer a balance between these two desires. That is, to be similar to others (those who you share group membership with), but also to be different from others (those who are outside of your group).
GROUP COHESION
In the social sciences, group cohesion refers to the processes that keep members of a social group connected. Terms such as attraction, solidarity, and morale are often used to describe group cohesion. It is thought to be one of the most important characteristics of a group, and has been linked to group performance, intergroup conflict and therapeutic change.
Group cohesion, as a scientifically studied property of groups, is commonly associated with Kurt Lewin and his student, Leon Festinger. Lewin defined group cohesion as the willingness of individuals to stick together, and believed that without cohesiveness a group could not exist. As an extension of Lewin’s work, Festinger (along with Stanley Schachter and Kurt Back) described cohesion as, “the total field of forces which act on members to remain in the group” (Festinger, Schachter, & Back, 1950, p. 37). Later, this definition was modified to describe the forces acting on individual members to remain in the group, termed attraction to the group. Since then, several models for understanding the concept of group cohesion have been developed, including Albert Carron’s hierarchical model and several bi-dimensional models (vertical v. horizontal cohesion, task v. social cohesion, belongingness and morale, and personal v. social attraction). Before Lewin and Festinger, there were, of course, descriptions of a very similar group property. For example, Emile Durkheim described two forms of solidarity (mechanical and organic), which created a sense of collective conscious and an emotion-based sense of community.
BLACK SHEEP EFFECT
Beliefs within the ingroup are based on how individuals in the group see their other members. Individuals tend to upgrade likeable in-group members and deviate from unlikeable group members, making them a separate outgroup. This is called the black sheep effect. A person’s beliefs about the group may be changed depending upon whether they are part of the ingroup or outgroup.
New members of a group must prove themselves to the full members, or “old-timers”, to become accepted. Full members have undergone socialization and are already accepted within the group. They have more privilege than newcomers but more responsibility to help the group achieve its goals. Marginal members were once full members but lost membership because they failed to live up to the group’s expectations. They can rejoin the group if they go through re-socialization. In a Bogart and Ryan study, the development of new members’ stereotypes about in-groups and out-groups during socialization was surveyed. Results showed that the new members judged themselves as consistent with the stereotypes of their in-groups, even when they had recently committed to join those groups or existed as marginal members. They also tended to judge the group as a whole in an increasingly less positive manner after they became full members.
Depending on the self-esteem of an individual, members of the in-group may experience different private beliefs about the group’s activities but will publicly express the opposite—that they actually share these beliefs. One member may not personally agree with something the group does, but to avoid the black sheep effect, they will publicly agree with the group and keep the private beliefs to themselves. If the person is privately self-aware, he or she is more likely to comply with the group even if they possibly have their own beliefs about the situation.
In situations of hazing within fraternities and sororities on college campuses, pledges may encounter this type of situation and may outwardly comply with the tasks they are forced to do regardless of their personal feelings about the Greek institution they are joining. This is done in an effort to avoid becoming an outcast of the group. Outcasts who behave in a way that might jeopardize the group tend to be treated more harshly than the likeable ones in a group, creating a black sheep effect. Full members of a fraternity might treat the incoming new members harshly, causing the pledges to decide if they approve of the situation and if they will voice their disagreeing opinions about it.
GROUP INFLUENCE ON INDIVIDUAL BEHAVIOR
Individual behavior is influenced by the presence of others. For example, studies have found that individuals work harder and faster when others are present (see social facilitation), and that an individual’s performance is reduced when others in the situation create distraction or conflict. Groups also influence individual’s decision-making processes. These include decisions related to ingroup bias, persuasion, obedience, and groupthink. There are both positive and negative implications of group influence on individual behavior. This type of influence is often useful in the context of work settings, team sports, and political activism. However, the influence of groups on the individual can also generate extremely negative behaviors, evident in Nazi Germany, the My Lai Massacre, and in the Abu Ghraib prison (also see Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse).
INTERGROUP DYNAMICS
Intergroup dynamics refers to the behavioral and psychological relationship between two or more groups. This includes perceptions, attitudes, opinions, and behaviors towards one’s own group, as well as those towards another group. In some cases, intergroup dynamics is prosocial, positive, and beneficial (for example, when multiple research teams work together to accomplish a task or goal). In other cases, intergroup dynamics can create conflict. For example, Fischer & Ferlie found initially positive dynamics between a clinical institution and its external authorities dramatically changed to a ‘hot’ and intractable conflict when authorities interfered with its embedded clinical model.[30] Similarly, underlying the 1999 Columbine High School shooting in Littleton, Colorado, United States, intergroup dynamics played a significant role in Eric Harris’ and Dylan Klebold’s decision to kill a teacher and 14 students (including themselves).
INTERGROUP CONFLICT
According to social identity theory, intergroup conflict starts with a process of comparison between individuals in one group (the ingroup) to those of another group (the outgroup). This comparison process is not unbiased and objective. Instead, it is a mechanism for enhancing one’s self-esteem. In the process of such comparisons, an individual tends to:
• favor the ingroup over the outgroup
• exaggerate and overgeneralize the differences between the ingroup and the outgroup (to enhance group distinctiveness)
• minimize the perception of differences between ingroup members
• remember more detailed and positive information about the ingroup, and more negative information about the outgroup
Even without any intergroup interaction (as in the minimal group paradigm), individuals begin to show favoritism towards their own group, and negative reactions towards the outgroup. This conflict can result in prejudice, stereotypes, and discrimination. Intergroup conflict can be highly competitive, especially for social groups with a long history of conflict (for example, the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, rooted in group conflict between the ethnic Hutu and Tutsi). In contrast, intergroup competition can sometimes be relatively harmless, particularly in situations where there is little history of conflict (for example, between students of different universities) leading to relatively harmless generalizations and mild competitive behaviors. Intergroup conflict is commonly recognized amidst racial, ethnic, religious, and political groups.
The formation of intergroup conflict was investigated in a popular series of studies by Muzafer Sherif and colleagues in 1961, called the Robbers Cave Experiment. The Robbers Cave Experiment was later used to support realistic conflict theory. Other prominent theories relating to intergroup conflict include social dominance theory, and social-/self-categorization theory.

INTERGROUP CONFLICT REDUCTION
There have been several strategies developed for reducing the tension, bias, prejudice, and conflict between social groups. These include the contact hypothesis, the jigsaw classroom, and several categorization-based strategies.
INTERDEPENDENCE
There are also techniques for reducing prejudice that utilize interdependence between two or more groups. That is, members across groups have to rely on one another to accomplish some goal or task. In the Robbers Cave Experiment, Sherif used this strategy to reduce conflict between groups. Elliot Aronson’s Jigsaw Classroom also uses this strategy of interdependence. In 1971, thick racial tensions were abounding in Austin, Texas. Aronson was brought in to examine the nature of this tension within schools, and to devise a strategy for reducing it (so to improve the process of school integration, mandated under Brown v. Board of Education in 1954). Despite strong evidence for the effectiveness of the jigsaw classroom, the strategy was not widely used (arguably because of strong attitudes existing outside of the schools, which still resisted the notion that racial and ethnic minority groups are equal to Whites and, similarly, should be integrated into schools).

CONCLUSION
The phrase “Group Dynamics” contains two words- (i) Group- a social unit of two or more individuals who have in common a set of beliefs and values, follow the same norms and works for an establishable common aim. The members of the group share a set of common purpose, tasks or goals. (ii) Dynamics- the flow of, coherent activities which as envisaged, will lead the group towards the establishment of its set goals.
The dynamics of a particular group depend on how one defines the boundaries of the group. Often, there are distinct subgroups within a more broadly defined group. For example, one could define U.S. residents (‘Americans’) as a group, but could also define a more specific set of U.S. residents (for example, ‘Americans in the South’). For each of these groups, there are distinct dynamics that can be discussed. Notably, on this very broad level, the study of group dynamics is similar to the study of culture. For example, there are group dynamics in the U.S. South that sustain a culture of honor, which is associated with norms of toughness, honor-related violence, and self-defense.

REFERENCES
1. Backstrom, L.; Huttenlocher, D.; Kleinberg, J.; Lan, X. (2006). “Group formation in large social networks”. Proceedings of the 12th ACM SIGKDD international conference on Knowledge discovery and data mining – KDD ’06. p. 44. doi:10.1145/1150402.1150412. ISBN 1595933395. edit
2. Hogg, M. A.; Williams, K. D. (2000). “From I to we: Social identity and the collective self”. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice 4: 81. doi:10.1037/1089-2699.4.1.81. edit
3. Westheimer, G. (1999). “Gestalt theory reconfigured: Max Wertheimer’s anticipation of recent developments in visual neuroscience”. Perception 28 (1): 5–15. doi:10.1068/p2883. PMID 10627849. edit
4. Dion, K. L. (2000). “Group cohesion: From “field of forces” to multidimensional construct”. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice 4: 7–2. doi:10.1037//1089-2699.4.1.7. edit
5. gupta, niranjan (2013). “The Research Center for tcce pindra garhwa”. Sociometry 8 (2): 126–136. doi:10.2307/2785233. JSTOR 2785233. edit
6. Van Vugt, M.; Schaller, M. (2008). “Evolutionary approaches to group dynamics: An introduction”. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice 12: 1. doi:10.1037/1089-2699.12.1.1. edit
7. Hammer, Espen Adorno and the political, pp.58-9
8. Schutz, W. (1958). FIRO: A Three-Dimensional Theory of Interpersonal Behavior. New York, NY: Rinehart.
9. Schutz, W. (1966). The Interpersonal Underworld. (Updated version based on 1958 work). Palo Alto, CA: Science and Behavior Books.
10. Page 194 to 196, Irvin D. Yalom, The Theory and Practice of Group Psychotherapy, third edition, Basic Books (1985), hardback, ISBN 0-465-08447-8
11. Peck, M. S. (1987) The Different Drum: Community-Making and Peace.p. 95-103.
12. J. Richard Hackman (2002). Leading Teams: Setting the Stage for Great Performances. Harvard Business Press.
13. Wageman, R. (1995). “Interdependence and Group Effectiveness”. Administrative Science Quarterly 40 (1): 145–180. doi:10.2307/2393703. edit
14. Cohen, D.; Nisbett, R. E.; Bowdle, B. F.; Schwarz, N. (1996). “Insult, aggression, and the southern culture of honor: An “experimental ethnography.””. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 70 (5): 945–959. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.70.5.945. PMID 8656339. edit
15. Cohen, D. (1998). “Culture, social organization, and patterns of violence”. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 75 (2): 408–419. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.75.2.408. PMID 9731316. edit
16. Sherif, M. (1936). The psychology of social norms. New York: Harper.
17. Majchrzak, A.; Jarvenpaa, S. L.; Hollingshead, A. B. (2007). “Coordinating Expertise Among Emergent Groups Responding to Disasters”. Organization Science 18: 147. doi:10.1287/orsc.1060.0228. edit
18. Crano, W. D. (2000). “Milestones in the psychological analysis of social influence”. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice 4: 68–61. doi:10.1037/1089-2699.4.1.68. edit

GIVE AN ACCOUNT OF THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF DESIDERUS ERASMUS

GIVE AN ACCOUNT OF THE CONTRIBUTIONS OF DESIDERUS ERASMUS
INTRODUCTION
Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus born 27 October 1466 – 12 July 1536), known as Erasmus of Rotterdam, or simply Erasmus, was a Dutch Renaissance humanist, Catholic priest, social critic, teacher, and theologian.
Erasmus was a classical scholar who wrote in a pure Latin style. Amongst humanists, he enjoyed the sobriquet “Prince of the Humanists”; he has been called “the crowning glory of the Christian humanists”. Using humanist techniques for working on texts, he prepared important new Latin and Greek editions of the New Testament. These raised questions that would be influential in the Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation. He also wrote On Free Will, The Praise of Folly, Handbook of a Christian Knight, On Civility in Children, Copia: Foundations of the Abundant Style, Julius Exclusus, and many other works.
Erasmus lived against the backdrop of the growing European religious Reformation; but while he was critical of the abuses within the Church and called for reform, he kept his distance from Luther and Melanchthon and continued to recognise the authority of the pope. Erasmus emphasized a middle way, with a deep respect for traditional faith, piety and grace, and rejected Luther’s emphasis on faith alone. Erasmus therefore remained a member of the Catholic Church all his life.[4] Erasmus remained committed to reforming the Church and its clerics’ abuses from within. He also held to Catholic doctrines such as that of free will, which some Reformers rejected in favour of the doctrine of predestination. His middle road approach disappointed and even angered scholars in both camps.

CONTRIBUTIONS
The Renaissance was a period of great change, characterized by a revision of many concepts and a return to antique sources. One of the greatest scholars of this time was Desiderius Erasmus. He contributed to the Renaissance by revising ancient works and translating them into Greek and Latin. During his lifetime, Erasmus also contributed to the Reformation by calling for reform in the Church through his various satirical works. He was a prolific writer and exerted such great influence during his time that he was called “The Prince of the Humanists.” 1 Erasmus was a dedicated Christian who advocated reform within the Church, spread the idea of pacifism, and was a subject of controversy and criticism within his own era and in modern times; yet he never lost touch with his Christian convictions.
He was one of the greatest scholars of the renaissance time. Erasmus contributed to the Renaissance by revising ancient works and translating them into Greek and Latin such as the Bible. Erasmus also contributed to the Reformation by calling for reform in the Church through his various satirical works. He was a prolific writer and exerted such great influence during his time that he was called “The Prince of the Humanists.” When Erasmus was send to Paris, he was not impressed with their educational system. It was based largely on scholasticism, a philosophy that tried to reduce religious belief to logical analysis. Being a devoted Christian, Erasmus decided to spend some time traveling through France and the Netherlands. Beginning in 1499, Erasmus moved from city to city working as a tutor and lecturer, constantly searching out ancient manuscripts and writing. He supported education to a great extent.
The popularity of his books is reflected in the number of editions and translations that have appeared since the sixteenth century. Ten columns of the catalogue of the British Library are taken up with the enumeration of the works and their subsequent reprints. The greatest names of the classical and patristic world are among those translated, edited or annotated by Erasmus, including Saint Ambrose, Aristotle, Saint Augustine, Saint Basil, Saint John Chrysostom, Cicero and Saint Jerome.
Erasmus also wrote of the legendary Frisian freedom fighter and rebel Pier Gerlofs Donia (Greate Pier), though more often in criticism than in praise of his exploits. Erasmus saw him as a dim, brutal man who preferred physical strength to wisdom.
One of Erasmus’s best-known works, inspired by De triumpho stultitiae (written by Italian humanist Faustino Perisauli), is The Praise of Folly, published under the double title Moriae encomium (Greek, Latinised) and Laus stultitiae (Latin). A satirical attack on superstitions and other traditions of European society in general and the western Church in particular, it was written in 1509, published in 1511, and dedicated to Sir Thomas More.

CONCLUSION
Erasmus died suddenly in Basel in 1536 while preparing to return to Brabant, and was buried in the Basel Minster, the former cathedral of the city.[5] A bronze statue of him was erected in his city of birth in 1622, replacing an earlier work in stone.
Erasmus was his baptismal name, given after St. Erasmus of Formiae. Desiderius was a self-adopted additional name, which he used from 1496. The Roterodamus in his scholarly name is the Latinized adjectival form for the city of Rotterdam.

REFERENCES
1. Gleason, John B. “The Birth Dates of John Colet and Erasmus of Rotterdam: Fresh Documentary Evidence,” Renaissance Quarterly, The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Renaissance Society of America, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Spring, 1979), pp. 73–76
2. Latourette, Kenneth Scott. A History of Christianity. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1953, p. 661.
3. Written to refute Martin Luther’s doctrine of “enslaved will”, according to Alister McGrath, Luther believed that only Erasmus, of all his interlocutors, understood and appreciated the locus of his doctrinal emphases and reforms. McGrath, Alister (2012). Iustitia Dei (3rd ed.). 3.4: “Justification in Early Lutheranism”: Cambridge University Press. pp. xiv + 448.)
4. Manfred Hoffmann, “Faith and Piety in Erasmus’s Thought,” Sixteenth Century Journal (1989) 20#2 pp 241-258
5. “He tried to remain in the fold of the old [Roman] Church, after having damaged it seriously, and renounced the [Protestant] Reformation, and to a certain extent even Humanism, after having furthered both with all his strength”. Johan Huizinga, Erasmus and the Age of Reformation (Tr. F. Hopman and Barbara Flower; New York: Harper and Row, 1924), 190.

FOOD WEB

FOOD WEB
A food web (or food cycle) depicts feeding connections (what-eats-what) in an ecological community and hence is also referred to as a consumer-resource system. Ecologists can broadly lump all life forms into one of two categories called trophic levels: 1) the autotrophs, and 2) the heterotrophs. To maintain their bodies, grow, develop, and to reproduce, autotrophs produce organic matter from inorganic substances, including both minerals and gases such as carbon dioxide. These chemical reactions require energy, which mainly comes from the sun and largely by photosynthesis, although a very small amount comes from hydrothermal vents and hot springs. A gradient exists between trophic levels running from complete autotrophs that obtain their sole source of carbon from the atmosphere, to mixotrophs (such as carnivorous plants) that are autotrophic organisms that partially obtain organic matter from sources other than the atmosphere, and complete heterotrophs that must feed to obtain organic matter. The linkages in a food web illustrate the feeding pathways, such as where heterotrophs obtain organic matter by feeding on autotrophs and other heterotrophs. The food web is a simplified illustration of the various methods of feeding that links an ecosystem into a unified system of exchange. There are different kinds of feeding relations that can be roughly divided into herbivory, carnivory, scavenging and parasitism. Some of the organic matter eaten by heterotrophs, such as sugars, provides energy. Autotrophs and heterotrophs come in all sizes, from microscopic to many tonnes – from cyanobacteria to giant redwoods, and from viruses and bdellovibrio to blue whales.
Charles Elton pioneered the concept of food cycles, food chains, and food size in his classical 1927 book “Animal Ecology”; Elton’s ‘food cycle’ was replaced by ‘food web’ in a subsequent ecological text. Elton organized species into functional groups, which was the basis for Raymond Lindeman’s classic and landmark paper in 1942 on trophic dynamics. Lindeman emphasized the important role of decomposer organisms in a trophic system of classification. The notion of a food web has a historical foothold in the writings of Charles Darwin and his terminology, including an “entangled bank”, “web of life”, “web of complex relations”, and in reference to the decomposition actions of earthworms he talked about “the continued movement of the particles of earth”. Even earlier, in 1768 John Bruckner described nature as “one continued web of life”.
Food webs are limited representations of real ecosystems as they necessarily aggregate many species into trophic species, which are functional groups of species that have the same predators and prey in a food web. Ecologists use these simplifications in quantitative (or mathematical) models of trophic or consumer-resource systems dynamics. Using these models they can measure and test for generalized patterns in the structure of real food web networks. Ecologists have identified non-random properties in the topographic structure of food webs. Published examples that are used in meta analysis are of variable quality with omissions. However, the number of empirical studies on community webs is on the rise and the mathematical treatment of food webs using network theory had identified patterns that are common to all. Scaling laws, for example, predict a relationship between the topology of food web predator-prey linkages and levels of species richness.
TAXONOMY OF A FOOD WEB
Food webs are the road-maps through Darwin’s famous ‘entangled bank’ and have a long history in ecology. Like maps of unfamiliar ground, food webs appear bewilderingly complex. They were often published to make just that point. Yet recent studies have shown that food webs from a wide range of terrestrial, freshwater, and marine communities share a remarkable list of patterns.
Links in food webs map the feeding connections (who eats whom) in an ecological community. Food cycle is the antiquated term that is synonymous with food web. Ecologists can broadly lump all life forms into one of two trophic layers, the autotrophs and the heterotrophs. Autotrophs produce more biomass energy, either chemically without the suns energy or by capturing the suns energy in photosynthesis, than they use during metabolic respiration. Heterotrophs consume rather than produce biomass energy as they metabolize, grow, and add to levels of secondary production. A food web depicts a collection of polyphagous heterotrophic consumers that network and cycle the flow of energy and nutrients from a productive base of self-feeding autotrophs.
The base or basal species in a food web are those species without prey and can include autotrophs or saprophytic detritivores (i.e., the community of decomposers in soil, biofilms, and periphyton). Feeding connections in the web are called trophic links. The number of trophic links per consumer is a measure of food web connectance. Food chains are nested within the trophic links of food webs. Food chains are linear (noncyclic) feeding pathways that trace monophagous consumers from a base species up to the top consumer, which is usually a larger predatory carnivore.
Linkages connect to nodes in a food web, which are aggregates of biological taxa called trophic species. Trophic species are functional groups that have the same predators and prey in a food web. Common examples of an aggregated node in a food web might include parasites, microbes, decomposers, saprotrophs, consumers, or predators, each containing many species in a web that can otherwise be connected to other trophic species.
TROPHIC LEVELS
Food webs have trophic levels and positions. Basal species, such as plants, form the first level and are the resource limited species that feed on no other living creature in the web. Basal species can be autotrophs or detritivores, including “decomposing organic material and its associated microorganisms which we defined as detritus, micro-inorganic material and associated microorganisms (MIP), and vascular plant material.” Most autotrophs capture the sun’s energy in chlorophyll, but some autotrophs (the chemolithotrophs) obtain energy by the chemical oxidation of inorganic compounds and can grow in dark environments, such as the sulfur bacterium Thiobacillus, which lives in hot sulfur springs. The top level has top (or apex) predators which no other species kills directly for its food resource needs. The intermediate levels are filled with omnivores that feed on more than one trophic level and cause energy to flow through a number of food pathways starting from a basal species.
In the simplest scheme, the first trophic level (level 1) is plants, then herbivores (level 2), and then carnivores (level 3). The trophic level is equal to one more than the chain length, which is the number of links connecting to the base. The base of the food chain (primary producers or detritivores) is set at zero. Ecologists identify feeding relations and organize species into trophic species through extensive gut content analysis of different species. The technique has been improved through the use of stable isotopes to better trace energy flow through the web. It was once thought that omnivory was rare, but recent evidence suggests otherwise. This realization has made trophic classifications more complex.
TROPHIC DYNAMICS
The trophic level concept was introduced in a historical landmark paper on trophic dynamics in 1942 by Raymond L. Lindeman. The basis of trophic dynamics is the transfer of energy from one part of the ecosystem to another. The trophic dynamic concept has served as a useful quantitative heuristic, but it has several major limitations including the precision by which an organism can be allocated to a specific trophic level. Omnivores, for example, are not restricted to any single level. Nonetheless, recent research has found that discrete trophic levels do exist, but “above the herbivore trophic level, food webs are better characterized as a tangled web of omnivores.”
A central question in the trophic dynamic literature is the nature of control and regulation over resources and production. Ecologists use simplified one trophic position food chain models (producer, carnivore, decomposer). Using these models, ecologists have tested various types of ecological control mechanisms. For example, herbivores generally have an abundance of vegetative resources, which meant that their populations were largely controlled or regulated by predators. This is known as the top-down hypothesis or ‘green-world’ hypothesis. Alternatively to the top-down hypothesis, not all plant material is edible and the nutritional quality or antiherbivore defenses of plants (structural and chemical) suggests a bottom-up form of regulation or control. Recent studies have concluded that both “top-down” and “bottom-up” forces can influence community structure and the strength of the influence is environmentally context dependent. These complex multitrophic interactions involve more than two trophic levels in a food web.
Another example of a multi-trophic interaction is a trophic cascade, in which predators help to increase plant growth and prevent overgrazing by suppressing herbivores. Links in a food-web illustrate direct trophic relations among species, but there are also indirect effects that can alter the abundance, distribution, or biomass in the trophic levels. For example, predators eating herbivores indirectly influence the control and regulation of primary production in plants. Although the predators do not eat the plants directly, they regulate the population of herbivores that are directly linked to plant trophism. The net effect of direct and indirect relations is called trophic cascades. Trophic cascades are separated into species-level cascades, where only a subset of the food-web dynamic is impacted by a change in population numbers, and community-level cascades, where a change in population numbers has a dramatic effect on the entire food-web, such as the distribution of plant biomass.
ENERGY FLOW AND BIOMASS
The Law of Conservation of Mass dates from Antoine Lavoisier’s 1789 discovery that mass is neither created nor destroyed in chemical reactions. In other words, the mass of any one element at the beginning of a reaction will equal the mass of that element at the end of the reaction.

Left: Energy flow diagram of a frog. The frog represents a node in an extended food web. The energy ingested is utilized for metabolic processes and transformed into biomass. The energy flow continues on its path if the frog is ingested by predators, parasites, or as a decaying carcass in soil. This energy flow diagram illustrates how energy is lost as it fuels the metabolic process that transform the energy and nutrients into biomass.
Right: An expanded three link energy food chain (1. plants, 2. herbivores, 3. carnivores) illustrating the relationship between food flow diagrams and energy transformity. The transformity of energy becomes degraded, dispersed, and diminished from higher quality to lesser quantity as the energy within a food chain flows from one trophic species into another. Abbreviations: I=input, A=assimilation, R=respiration, NU=not utilized, P=production, B=biomass.

Food webs depict energy flow via trophic linkages. Energy flow is directional, which contrasts against the cyclic flows of material through the food web systems. Energy flow “typically includes production, consumption, assimilation, non-assimilation losses (feces), and respiration (maintenance costs).” In a very general sense, energy flow (E) can be defined as the sum of metabolic production (P) and respiration (R), such that E=P+R.
The mass (or biomass) of something is equal to its energy content. Mass and energy are closely intertwined. However, concentration and quality of nutrients and energy is variable. Many plant fibers, for example, are indigestible to many herbivores leaving grazer community food webs more nutrient limited than detrital food webs where bacteria are able to access and release the nutrient and energy stores. “Organisms usually extract energy in the form of carbohydrates, lipids, and proteins. These polymers have a dual role as supplies of energy as well as building blocks; the part that functions as energy supply results in the production of nutrients (and carbon dioxide, water, and heat). Excretion of nutrients is, therefore, basic to metabolism.” The units in energy flow webs are typically a measure mass or energy per m2 per unit time. Different consumers are going to have different metabolic assimilation efficiencies in their diets. Each trophic level transforms energy into biomass. Energy flow diagrams illustrate the rates and efficiency of transfer from one trophic level into another and up through the hierarchy.
It is the case that the biomass of each trophic level decreases from the base of the chain to the top. This is because energy is lost to the environment with each transfer as entropy increases. About eighty to ninety percent of the energy is expended for the organism’s life processes or is lost as heat or waste. Only about ten to twenty percent of the organism’s energy is generally passed to the next organism. The amount can be less than one percent in animals consuming less digestible plants, and it can be as high as forty percent in zooplankton consuming phytoplankton. Graphic representations of the biomass or productivity at each tropic level are called ecological pyramids or trophic pyramids. The transfer of energy from primary producers to top consumers can also be characterized by energy flow diagrams.
FOOD CHAIN
A common metric used to quantify food web trophic structure is food chain length. Food chain length is another way of describing food webs as a measure of the number of species encountered as energy or nutrients move from the plants to top predators. There are different ways of calculating food chain length depending on what parameters of the food web dynamic are being considered: connectance, energy, or interaction. In its simplest form, the length of a chain is the number of links between a trophic consumer and the base of the web. The mean chain length of an entire web is the arithmetic average of the lengths of all chains in a food web.
In a simple predator-prey example, a deer is one step removed from the plants it eats (chain length = 1) and a wolf that eats the deer is two steps removed (chain length = 2). The relative amount or strength of influence that these parameters have on the food web address questions about:
• the identity or existence of a few dominant species (called strong interactors or keystone species)
• the total number of species and food-chain length (including many weak interactors) and
• how community structure, function and stability is determined.[35][36]
Ecological pyramids

Top Left: A four level trophic pyramid sitting on a layer of soil and its community of decomposers. Top right: A three layer trophic pyramid linked to the biomass and energy flow concepts. Bottom: Illustration of a range of ecological pyramids, including top pyramid of numbers, middle pyramid of biomass, and bottom pyramid of energy. The terrestrial forest (summer) and the English Channel ecosystems exhibit inverted pyramids.Note: trophic levels are not drawn to scale and the pyramid of numbers excludes microorganisms and soil animals. Abbreviations: P=Producers, C1=Primary consumers, C2=Secondary consumers, C3=Tertiary consumers, S=Saprotrophs.
In a pyramid of numbers, the number of consumers at each level decreases significantly, so that a single top consumer, (e.g., a polar bear or a human), will be supported by a much larger number of separate producers. There is usually a maximum of four or five links in a food chain, although food chains in aquatic ecosystems are more often longer than those on land. Eventually, all the energy in a food chain is dispersed as heat.
Ecological pyramids place the primary producers at the base. They can depict different numerical properties of ecosystems, including numbers of individuals per unit of area, biomass (g/m2), and energy (k cal m−2 yr−1). The emergent pyramidal arrangement of trophic levels with amounts of energy transfer decreasing as species become further removed from the source of production is one of several patterns that is repeated amongst the planets ecosystems. The size of each level in the pyramid generally represents biomass, which can be measured as the dry weight of an organism. Autotrophs may have the highest global proportion of biomass, but they are closely rivaled or surpassed by microbes.
Pyramid structure can vary across ecosystems and across time. In some instances biomass pyramids can be inverted. This pattern is often identified in aquatic and coral reef ecosystems. The pattern of biomass inversion is attributed to different sizes of producers. Aquatic communities are often dominated by producers that are smaller than the consumers that have high growth rates. Aquatic producers, such as planktonic algae or aquatic plants, lack the large accumulation of secondary growth as exists in the woody trees of terrestrial ecosystems. However, they are able to reproduce quickly enough to support a larger biomass of grazers. This inverts the pyramid. Primary consumers have longer lifespans and slower growth rates that accumulates more biomass than the producers they consume. Phytoplankton live just a few days, whereas the zooplankton eating the phytoplankton live for several weeks and the fish eating the zooplankton live for several consecutive years. Aquatic predators also tend to have a lower death rate than the smaller consumers, which contributes to the inverted pyramidal pattern. Population structure, migration rates, and environmental refuge for prey are other possible causes for pyramids with biomass inverted. Energy pyramids, however, will always have an upright pyramid shape if all sources of food energy are included and this is dictated by the second law of thermodynamics.
MATERIAL FLUX AND RECYCLING
Many of the Earth’s elements and minerals (or mineral nutrients) are contained within the tissues and diets of organisms. Hence, mineral and nutrient cycles trace food web energy pathways. Ecologists employ stoichiometry to analyze the ratios of the main elements found in all organisms: carbon (C), nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P). There is a large transitional difference between many terrestrial and aquatic systems as C:P and C:N ratios are much higher in terrestrial systems while N:P ratios are equal between the two systems. Mineral nutrients are the material resources that organisms need for growth, development, and vitality. Food webs depict the pathways of mineral nutrient cycling as they flow through organisms. Most of the primary production in an ecosystem is not consumed, but is recycled by detritus back into useful nutrients. Many of the Earth’s microorganisms are involved in the formation of minerals in a process called biomineralization. Bacteria that live in detrital sediments create and cycle nutrients and biominerals. Food web models and nutrient cycles have traditionally been treated separately, but there is a strong functional connection between the two in terms of stability, flux, sources, sinks, and recycling of mineral nutrients.
KINDS OF FOOD WEBS
Food webs are necessarily aggregated and only illustrate a tiny portion of the complexity of real ecosystems. For example, the number of species on the planet are likely in the general order of 107, over 95% of these species consist of microbes and invertebrates, and relatively few have been named or classified by taxonomists. It is explicitly understood that natural systems are ‘sloppy’ and that food web trophic positions simplify the complexity of real systems that sometimes overemphasize many rare interactions. Most studies focus on the larger influences where the bulk of energy transfer occurs. “These omissions and problems are causes for concern, but on present evidence do not present insurmountable difficulties.”

There are different kinds or categories of food webs:
• Source web – one or more node(s), all of their predators, all the food these predators eat, and so on.
• Sink web – one or more node(s), all of their prey, all the food that these prey eat, and so on.
• Community (or connectedness) web – a group of nodes and all the connections of who eats whom.
• Energy flow web – quantified fluxes of energy between nodes along links between a resource and a consumer.
• Paleoecological web – a web that reconstructs ecosystems from the fossil record.
• Functional web – emphasizes the functional significance of certain connections having strong interaction strength and greater bearing on community organization, more so than energy flow pathways. Functional webs have compartments, which are sub-groups in the larger network where there are different densities and strengths of interaction. Functional webs emphasize that “the importance of each population in maintaining the integrity of a community is reflected in its influence on the growth rates of other populations.”
Within these categories, food webs can be further organized according to the different kinds of ecosystems being investigated. For example, human food webs, agricultural food webs, detrital food webs, marine food webs, aquatic food webs, soil food webs, Arctic (or polar) food webs, terrestrial food webs, and microbial food webs. These characterizations stem from the ecosystem concept, which assumes that the phenomena under investigation (interactions and feedback loops) are sufficient to explain patterns within boundaries, such as the edge of a forest, an island, a shoreline, or some other pronounced physical characteristic.
DETRITAL WEB
In a detrital web, plant and animal matter is broken down by decomposers, e.g., bacteria and fungi, and moves to detritivores and then carnivores. There are often relationships between the detrital web and the grazing web. Mushrooms produced by decomposers in the detrital web become a food source for deer, squirrels, and mice in the grazing web. Earthworms eaten by robins are detritivores consuming decaying leaves.
“Detritus can be broadly defined as any form of non-living organic matter, including different types of plant tissue (e.g. leaf litter, dead wood, aquatic macrophytes, algae), animal tissue (carrion), dead microbes, faeces (manure, dung, faecal pellets, guano, frass), as well as products secreted, excreted or exuded from organisms (e.g. extra-cellular polymers, nectar, root exudates and leachates, dissolved organic matter, extra-cellular matrix, mucilage). The relative importance of these forms of detritus, in terms of origin, size and chemical composition, varies across ecosystems.”
QUANTITATIVE FOOD WEBS
Ecologists collect data on trophic levels and food webs to statistically model and mathematically calculate parameters, such as those used in other kinds of network analysis (e.g., graph theory), to study emergent patterns and properties shared among ecosystems. There are different ecological dimensions that can be mapped to create more complicated food webs, including: species composition (type of species), richness (number of species), biomass (the dry weight of plants and animals), productivity (rates of conversion of energy and nutrients into growth), and stability (food webs over time). A food web diagram illustrating species composition shows how change in a single species can directly and indirectly influence many others. Microcosm studies are used to simplify food web research into semi-isolated units such as small springs, decaying logs, and laboratory experiments using organisms that reproduce quickly, such as daphnia feeding on algae grown under controlled environments in jars of water.
While the complexity of real food webs connections are difficult to decipher, ecologists have found mathematical models on networks an invaluable tool for gaining insight into the structure, stability, and laws of food web behaviours relative to observable outcomes. “Food web theory centers around the idea of connectance.” Quantitative formulas simplify the complexity of food web structure. The number of trophic links (tL), for example, is converted into a connectance value:
,
where, S(S-1)/2 is the maximum number of binary connections among S species. “Connectance (C) is the fraction of all possible links that are realized (L/S2) and represents a standard measure of food web complexity…” The distance (d) between every species pair in a web is averaged to compute the mean distance between all nodes in a web (D) and multiplied by the total number of links (L) to obtain link-density (LD), which is influenced by scale dependent variables such as species richness. These formulas are the basis for comparing and investigating the nature of non-random patterns in the structure of food web networks among many different types of ecosystems.
Scaling laws, complexity, choas, and patterned correlates are common features attributed to food web structure.
COMPLEXITY AND STABILITY
Food webs are complex. Complexity is a measure of an increasing number of permutations and it is also a metaphorical term that conveys the mental intractability or limits concerning unlimited algorithmic possibilities. In food web terminology, complexity is a product of the number of species and connectance. Connectance is “the fraction of all possible links that are realized in a network”.These concepts were derived and stimulated through the suggestion that complexity leads to stability in food webs, such as increasing the number of trophic levels in more species rich ecosystems. This hypothesis was challenged through mathematical models suggesting otherwise, but subsequent studies have shown that the premise holds in real systems.
At different levels in the hierarchy of life, such as the stability of a food web, “the same overall structure is maintained in spite of an ongoing flow and change of components.” The farther a living system (e.g., ecosystem) sways from equilibrium, the greater its complexity. Complexity has multiple meanings in the life sciences and in the public sphere that confuse its application as a precise term for analytical purposes in science. Complexity in the life sciences (or biocomplexity) is defined by the “properties emerging from the interplay of behavioral, biological, physical, and social interactions that affect, sustain, or are modified by living organisms, including humans”.
Several concepts have emerged from the study of complexity in food webs. Complexity explains many principals pertaining to self-organization, non-linearity, interaction, cybernetic feedback, discontinuity, emergence, and stability in food webs. Nestedness, for example, is defined as “a pattern of interaction in which specialists interact with species that form perfect subsets of the species with which generalists interact”, “—that is, the diet of the most specialized species is a subset of the diet of the next more generalized species, and its diet a subset of the next more generalized, and so on.” Until recently, it was thought that food webs had little nested structure, but empirical evidence shows that many published webs have nested subwebs in their assembly.
Food webs are complex networks. As networks, they exhibit similar structural properties and mathematical laws that have been used to describe other complex systems, such as small world and scale free properties. The small world attribute refers to the many loosely connected nodes, non-random dense clustering of a few nodes (i.e., trophic or keystone species in ecology), and small path length compared to a regular lattice. “Ecological networks, especially mutualistic networks, are generally very heterogeneous, consisting of areas with sparse links among species and distinct areas of tightly linked species. These regions of high link density are often referred to as cliques, hubs, compartments, cohesive sub-groups, or modules…Within food webs, especially in aquatic systems, nestedness appears to be related to body size because the diets of smaller predators tend to be nested subsets of those of larger predators (Woodward & Warren 2007; YvonDurocher et al. 2008), and phylogenetic constraints, whereby related taxa are nested based on their common evolutionary history, are also evident (Cattin et al. 2004).” “Compartments in food webs are subgroups of taxa in which many strong interactions occur within the subgroups and few weak interactions occur between the subgroups. Theoretically, compartments increase the stability in networks, such as food webs.”
Food webs are also complex in the way that they change in scale, seasonally, and geographically. The components of food webs, including organisms and mineral nutrients, cross the thresholds of ecosystem boundaries. This has led to the concept or area of study known as cross-boundary subsidy. “This leads to anomalies, such as food web calculations determining that an ecosystem can support one half of a top carnivore, without specifying which end.” Nonetheless, real differences in structure and function have been identified when comparing different kinds of ecological food webs, such as terrestrial vs. aquatic food webs.
HISTORY OF FOOD WEBS
Food webs serve as a framework to help ecologists organize the complex network of interactions among species observed in nature and around the world. One of the earliest descriptions of a food chain was described by a medieval Afro-Arab scholar named Al-Jahiz: “All animals, in short, cannot exist without food, neither can the hunting animal escape being hunted in his turn.” The earliest graphical depiction of a food web was by Lorenzo Camerano in 1880, followed independently by those of Pierce and colleagues in 1912 and Victor Shelford in 1913. Two food webs about herring were produced by Victor Summerhayes and Charles Elton[86] and Alister Hardy[87] in 1923 and 1924. Charles Elton subsequently pioneered the concept of food cycles, food chains, and food size in his classical 1927 book “Animal Ecology”; Elton’s ‘food cycle’ was replaced by ‘food web’ in a subsequent ecological text.[88] After Charles Elton’s use of food webs in his 1927 synthesis,[89] they became a central concept in the field of ecology. Elton[88] organized species into functional groups, which formed the basis for the trophic system of classification in Raymond Lindeman’s classic and landmark paper in 1942 on trophic dynamics.[16][36][90] The notion of a food web has a historical foothold in the writings of Charles Darwin and his terminology, including an “entangled bank”, “web of life”, “web of complex relations”, and in reference to the decomposition actions of earthworms he talked about “the continued movement of the particles of earth”. Even earlier, in 1768 John Bruckner described nature as “one continued web of life”.[3][91][92][93]
Interest in food webs increased after Robert Paine’s experimental and descriptive study of intertidal shores[94] suggesting that food web complexity was key to maintaining species diversity and ecological stability. Many theoretical ecologists, including Sir Robert May[95] and Stuart Pimm,[96] were prompted by this discovery and others to examine the mathematical properties of food webs.

FOOD ADDICTIVES, PESTICIDE AND STORAGE OF CHEMICALS IN THE BODY

INTRODUCTION
FOOD ADDICTIVES
Addictive are ingredients used in the preparation of processed food. Some of these are extracted from naturally occurring materials others are manufactured by the chemical industry.
List of food additives types
Food additives can be divided into several groups, although there is some overlap between them. They are all listed below;
Acids: Food acids are added to make flavors “shaper” and also act as preservatives and antioxidants. Common food acids include vinegar, citric acid, tartaric acid, malic acid, fumaric acid, and lactic acid.
Acidity Regulator: Acidity regulator are used to change or other control the acidity and alkalinity of foods.
Anticaking Agents: Anticaking agent keeps powers such as muk power from caking or sticking.
Antifoaming Agent: Antifoaming agent reduce or prevent foaming in foods.
Antioxidants: Antioxidant such as vitamins c act as preservatives by inhibiting the effect of oxygen on food, and can be beneficial to health.
Bulking Agents: Bulking agent such as starch are additives that increases the bulk of a food without affecting us nutritional value.
Food Coloring: Coloring is added to food to replace colors lost during preparation, or to make food look more attractive.
Colour Retention Agent: In constant to coloring, colour retention agents are used to preserve a foods existing color.
Emulsifier: Emulsifier allows water and oil to remain mixed together in an emulsion, as in mayonnaise, ice cream, and homogenized muk.
Flavor: Flavors are additives that fives food a particular taste or smell, and may be divided from natural ingredient or created artificially.
Flavor Enhancer: Flavor enhancer enhances a food existing flavors. They may be extracted from natural sources (through distillation, solvent extraction, maceration, among other methods) or created artificially.
Flavor Treatment Agent: Flavor treatment agent are added to flour to improve its colour or its use in baking.
Glazing Agent; Glazing agent provide a shiny appearance or protective coating to foods.
Preservatives
Preservatives prevent or inhibit spoilage of food due to fungi, bacteria and other microorganisms
Stabilizes
Stabilizes, thickness and gelling agents like agar or pectin (used in jam) give foods a firmed texture. While they are not true emulsifiers, they help to stabilize emulsions.
Sweeteners
Sweeteners are added to foods for flavoring. Sweeteners other than sugar are added to keep the food energy (Calories) low, or because they have beneficial effects for diabetics mellitus and tooth decay and diarrhea.
Thickeners
Thickeners are substances which, when added to the mixture, increase its viscosity without substantially modifying its other properties.
All food addictives are not always “less safe” than maturely occurring chemicals. Many food additives used by the food industry also occur naturally within foods that people eat everyday.
PESTICIDES
A pesticide is a chemical used to prevent, destroy or repel pests. Pest can be insects, mice and other chemical, weeds, fungi or microorganisms such as bacteria and viruses.
Some example of pest are termites causing damage to our homes, dandelions in the lawn, and fleas on our homes, dandelions in the lawn and fleas on our dogs and cats. Pesticides also are used to kill organisms that can cause diseases.
Most pesticides contain chemicals, that can be harmful to people, animals or the environment for this reason the office of pesticide Programmed of Environmental Protection Agency regulates pesticides in the united state. To protect public health and environment.
SOME PESTICIDES PRODUCT USE IN OUR HOMES .
1. Cockroach sprays and baits
2. Mosquito spray
3. Rat poisons
4. Flea and tick sprays.
STORAGE CHEMICAL IN FOOD
All foods, living matters and indeed our bodies themselves are made up of chemicals. Many of the chemical found in food occur naturally and include nutrients such as carbohydrates, protein, fat, fiber and a host of other element and compounds. Chemical substances can play an important role in food production and preservation. Food addictives can, for example, prolong the shelf life of foods.
All chemicals substances authorized for use in food must first undergo a thorough risk assessment to ensure that they are safe. The possible to such chemicals to our health and safety defends on our level of exposure to them. That is why regulatory bodies carry out strict risk assessment on chemicals propose for use in food to determine which substances can be used and at which levels.
Once the chemical has entered the body or blood stream, all the chemicals circulate around the body initially its concentration in the blood will be greater than in the tissues.
All chemicals passes into and out of cells must cross the cell membrane it is the membrane that keeps all the cell contents securely in side.

FIND OUT THE CAUSES AND CONTROL OF URBANIZATION IN MEXICO USING THE INTERNET AS A SOURCE.

FIND OUT THE CAUSES AND CONTROL OF URBANIZATION IN MEXICO USING THE INTERNET AS A SOURCE.
INTRODUCTION
Mexico officially the United Mexican States is a federal republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of Mexico. Covering almost two million square kilometres (over 760,000 sq mi), Mexico is the fifth largest country in the Americas by total area and the 13th largest independent nation in the world. With an estimated population of over 113 million, it is the eleventh most populous and the most populous Spanish-speaking country in the world and the second most populous country in Latin America. Mexico is a federation comprising thirty-one states and a Federal District, the capital city.
Urbanization is the increasing number of people that migrate from rural to urban areas. It predominantly results in the physical growth of urban areas, be it horizontal or vertical. The United Nations projected that half of the world’s population would live in urban areas at the end of 2008. By 2050 it is predicted that 64.1% and 85.9% of the developing and developed world respectively will be urbanized. Thus Urbanization is closely linked to modernization, industrialization, and the sociological process of rationalization. Urbanization can describe a specific condition at a set time, i.e. the proportion of total population or area in cities or towns, or the term can describe the increase of this proportion over time. So the term urbanization can represent the level of urban development relative to overall population, or it can represent the rate at which the urban proportion is increasing.
Urbanization is not merely a modern phenomenon, but a rapid and historic transformation of human social roots on a global scale, whereby predominantly rural culture is being rapidly replaced by predominantly urban culture. The last major change in settlement patterns was the accumulation of hunter-gatherers into villages many thousand years ago
URBANIZATION IN MEXICO
Urbanization occurs when people move from rural to urban areas, so that the proportion of people living in cities increases while the proportion of people living in rural areas diminishes. In the last century, the world’s population has urbanized quickly. In 1900, just 13% of people lived in cities; by 1950, the proportion rose to 29%. According to projections, the proportion could reach 60% by 2030, or nearly 5 billion people.
Mexico City has undergone rapid urbanization according to the pattern seen in many developing countries. Mexico has rapidly changed from a primarily agricultural country to one with significant industry, including industrialized agriculture. Consequently, huge numbers of rural dwellers migrated to Mexico City, making it an extremely densely populated city of nearly 9 million.
Urbanization generally occurs with modernization and industrialization, and is often motivated by economic factors. These factors pull people to cities at the same time that they push people from rural homes.
Another term for urbanization is “rural flight.” In modern times, this flight often occurs in a region following the industrialization of agriculture—when fewer people are needed to bring the same amount of agricultural output to market—and related agricultural services and industries are consolidated. These factors negatively affect the economy of small- and middle-sized farms and strongly reduce the size of the rural labor market. Rural flight is exacerbated when the population decline leads to the loss of rural services (such as business enterprises and schools), which leads to greater loss of population as people leave to seek those features.
As more and more people leave villages and farms to live in cities, urban growth results. The rapid growth of cities like Chicago in the late nineteenth century and Mumbai a century later can be attributed largely to rural-urban migration. This kind of growth is especially commonplace in developing countries.
Urbanization occurs naturally from individual and corporate efforts to reduce time and expense in commuting, while improving opportunities for jobs, education, housing, entertainment, and transportation. Living in cities permits individuals and families to take advantage of the opportunities of proximity, diversity, and marketplace competition. Due to their high populations, urban areas can also have more diverse social communities than rural areas, allowing others to find people like them.
CAUSES AND CONTROL OF URBANIZATION IN MEXICO
Urbanization occurs as individual, commercial, social and governmental efforts reduce time and expense in commuting and transportation and improve opportunities for jobs, education, housing, and transportation. Living in cities permits the advantages of the opportunities of proximity, diversity, and marketplace competition. However, the advantages of urbanization are weighed against alienation issues, stress, increased daily life costs, and negative social aspects that result from mass marginalization. Suburbanization, which is happening in the cities of the largest developing countries, was sold and seen as an attempt to balance these negative aspects of urban life while still allowing access to the large extent of shared resources.
Cities are known to be places where money, services, wealth and opportunities are centralized. Many rural inhabitants come to the city for reasons of seeking fortunes and social mobility. Businesses, which provide jobs and exchange capital are more concentrated in urban areas. Whether the source is trade or tourism, it is also through the ports or banking systems that foreign money flows into a country, commonly located in cities.
Economic opportunities are just one reason people move into cities, though they do not go to fully explain why urbanization rates have exploded only recently in places like China and India. Rural flight is a contributing factor to urbanization. In rural areas, often on small family farms or collective farms in villages, it has traditionally been difficult to access manufactured goods, though overall quality of life is very subjective, and may certainly surpass that of the city. Farm living has always been susceptible to unpredictable environmental conditions, and in times of drought, flood or pestilence, survival may become extremely problematic.
In a New York Times article concerning the acute migration away from farming in Mexico, life as a farmer was described as “hot and exhausting.” “Everyone says the farmer works the hardest but gets the least amount of money”. In an effort to counter this impression, the Agriculture Department of Thailand is seeking to promote the impression that farming is “honorable and secure”.
However, in Mexico, urbanization has also resulted in massive increases in problems such as obesity. City life, especially in modern urban slums of the developing world, is certainly hardly immune to pestilence or climatic disturbances such as floods, yet continues to strongly attract migrants. Examples of this were the 2011 Thailand floods and 2007 Jakarta flood. Urban areas are also far more prone to violence, drugs, and other urban social problems. In the case of the Mexico economy, industrialization of agriculture has negatively affected the economy of small and middle-sized farms and strongly reduced the size of the rural labour market.
Particularly in the developing world, conflict over land rights due to the effects of globalization has led to less political powerful groups, such as farmers, losing or forfeiting their land, resulting in obligatory migration into cities. In other Mexico cities, where land acquisition measures are forceful, there has been far more extensive and rapid urbanization (51%) than in capital (29%), where peasants form militant groups (e.g. Naxalites) to oppose such efforts. Obligatory and unplanned migration often results in rapid growth of slums. This is also similar to areas of violent conflict, where people are driven off their land due to violence. Bogota, Colombia is one example of this.
Cities offer a larger variety of services, such as specialist services that aren’t found in rural areas. Supporting the provision of these services requires workers, resulting in more numerous and varied job opportunities. Elderly individuals may be forced to move to cities where there are doctors and hospitals that can cater for their health needs. Varied and high quality educational opportunities are another factor in urban migration, as well as the opportunity to join, develop, and seek out social communities.
People located in cities are more productive than those working outside dense agglomerations. An important question for the policy makers as well as for clustering people deals with the causality of this relationship, that is whether people become more productive in cities due to certain agglomeration effects or are cities simply attracting those who are more productive. Economists have recently shown that there exists indeed a large productivity gain due to locating in dense agglomerations.[13] It is thus possible that agents locate in cities in order to benefit from these agglomeration effects.

CONTROL OF URBANIZATION IN MEXICO
One major control of urbanization in Mexico is through wage inflation which has started to yield results and demand for more mature food stuffs are on the up. There is much development still needed. The provisions of social amenities available in rural areas are going on, and this follows through into demand for temporary measures such as generators. Companies benefiting from this specifically are Aggreko, the largest generator maker globally. Also, JCB announced strong demand for their vehicles (diggers) as construction ahead of the Rio Olympics is well under way. After some good results recently, it is inherent demand in emerging markets is on the up and up.

Emerging market investment funds will be your best bet to capture some of this upside. First State Global Emerging Market Leaders would be my choice, however with such a pull on infrastructure spending still such a necessity, First States Global Listed Infrastructure fund is prime for growth.
These rapidly expanding countries have the size and ability to become some of the leading economies in the world, however it will not be a smooth ride and the management of growth throughout the whole country is needed.

REFERENCES
1. “UN says half the world’s population will live in urban areas by end of 2008”. International Herald Tribune. Associated Press. 26 February 2008. Archived from the original on 9 February 2009.
2. “Urban life: Open-air computers”. The Economist. 27 October 2012. Retrieved 20 March 2013.
3. Christopher Watson, Trends in urbanisation
4. “United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs”.
5. Patricia Clarke Annez, Robert M. Buckley, Urbanization and growth
6. “World Urbanization Prospects: The 2005 Revision, Pop. Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, UN”.
7. “UN State of the World Population”. UNFPA. 2007.
8. Ankerl, Guy (1986). Urbanization Overspeed in Tropical Africa. INUPRESS, Geneva. ISBN 2-88155-000-2.
9. “Population Bulletin 2007/2008” (Press release). Milton Keynes intelligence Observatory. 10/03/2008. Retrieved 11/06/2008.
10. based on 2000 U.S. Census Data
11. Fuller, Thomas (5 June 2012). “Thai Youth Seek a Fortune Away From the Farm”. New York Times. Retrieved 5 June 2012.
12. “Early Death Assured In India Where 900 Million Go Hungry”. Bloomberg. 13 June 2012. Retrieved 13 June 2012.
13. Borowiecki, Karol J. (2013) Geographic Clustering and Productivity: An Instrumental Variable Approach for Classical Composers, Journal of Urban Economics, 73(1): 94–110

THE RENAISSANCE AND JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.

THE RENAISSANCE AND JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.
INTRODUCTION
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned the period roughly from the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. Though availability of paper and the invention of metal movable type sped the dissemination of ideas from the later 15th century, the changes of the Renaissance were not uniformly experienced across Europe.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau 28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of the 18th century. His political philosophy influenced the French Revolution as well as the overall development of modern political, sociological, and educational thought.
Rousseau’s novel Émile, or On Education is a treatise on the education of the whole person for citizenship. His sentimental novel Julie, or the New Heloise was of importance to the development of pre-romanticism and romanticism in fiction. Rousseau’s autobiographical writings — his Confessions, which initiated the modern autobiography, and his Reveries of a Solitary Walker — exemplified the late 18th-century movement known as the Age of Sensibility, and featured an increased focus on subjectivity and introspection that later characterized modern writing. His Discourse on the Origin of Inequality and his On the Social Contract are cornerstones in modern political and social thought. He argued that private property was conventional and the beginning of true civil society.
During the period of the French Revolution, Rousseau was the most popular of the philosophes among members of the Jacobin Club. Rousseau was interred as a national hero in the Panthéon in Paris, in 1794, 16 years after his death.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU PHILOSOPHY
In common with other philosophers of the day, Rousseau looked to a hypothetical State of Nature as a normative guide.
Rousseau criticized Hobbes for asserting that since man in the “state of nature . . . has no idea of goodness he must be naturally wicked; that he is vicious because he does not know virtue”. On the contrary, Rousseau holds that “uncorrupted morals” prevail in the “state of nature” and he especially praised the admirable moderation of the Caribbeans in expressing the sexual urge[20] despite the fact that they live in a hot climate, which “always seems to inflame the passions”.
Rousseau asserted that the stage of human development associated with what he called “savages” was the best or optimal in human development, between the less-than-optimal extreme of brute animals on the one hand and the extreme of decadent civilization on the other. “…[N]othing is so gentle as man in his primitive state, when placed by nature at an equal distance from the stupidity of brutes and the fatal enlightenment of civil man.”[22] Referring to the stage of human development which Rousseau associates with savages, Rousseau writes:
“Hence although men had become less forebearing, and although natural pity had already undergone some alteration, this period of the development of human faculties, maintaining a middle position between the indolence of our primitive state and the petulant activity of our egocentrism, must have been the happiest and most durable epoch. The more one reflects on it, the more one finds that this state was the least subject to upheavals and the best for man, and that he must have left it only by virtue of some fatal chance happening that, for the common good, ought never to have happened. The example of savages, almost all of whom have been found in this state, seems to confirm that the human race had been made to remain in it always; that this state is the veritable youth of the world; and that all the subsequent progress has been in appearance so many steps toward the perfection of the individual, and in fact toward the decay of the species.”
STAGES OF HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
Rousseau believed that the savage stage was not the first stage of human development, but the third stage. Rousseau held that this third savage stage of human societal development was an optimum, between the extreme of the state of brute animals and animal-like “ape-men” on the one hand, and the extreme of decadent civilized life on the other. This has led some critics to attribute to Rousseau the invention of the idea of the noble savage, which Arthur Lovejoy conclusively showed misrepresents Rousseau’s thought.
The expression, “the noble savage” was first used in 1672 by British poet John Dryden in his play The Conquest of Granada. Rousseau wrote that morality was not a societal construct, but rather “natural” in the sense of “innate”, an outgrowth from man’s instinctive disinclination to witness suffering, from which arise the emotions of compassion or empathy. These were sentiments shared with animals, and whose existence even Hobbes acknowledged.
Contrary to what his many detractors have claimed, Rousseau never suggests that humans in the state of nature act morally; in fact, terms such as “justice” or “wickedness” are inapplicable to prepolitical society as Rousseau understands it. Morality proper, i.e., self-restraint, can only develop through careful education in a civil state. Humans “in a state of Nature” may act with all of the ferocity of an animal. They are good only in a negative sense, insofar as they are self-sufficient and thus not subject to the vices of political society.
As a cultural movement, it encompassed innovative flowering of Latin and vernacular literatures, beginning with the 14th-century resurgence of learning based on classical sources, which contemporaries credited to Petrarch, the development of linear perspective and other techniques of rendering a more natural reality in painting, and gradual but widespread educational reform.
In politics, the Renaissance contributed the development of the conventions of diplomacy, and in science an increased reliance on observation. Historians often argue this intellectual transformation was a bridge between the Middle Ages and Modern history. Although the Renaissance saw revolutions in many intellectual pursuits, as well as social and political upheaval, it is perhaps best known for its artistic developments and the contributions of such polymaths as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, who inspired the term “Renaissance man”.
SHOW HOW JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU REPRESENT A TYPICAL RENAISSANCES PHILOSOPHY.
The “Renaissance philosophy” is used by scholars of intellectual history to refer to the thought of the period running in Europe roughly between 1350 and 1650 (the dates shift forward for central and northern Europe and for areas such as Spanish America, India, Japan, and China under European influence). It therefore overlaps both with late medieval philosophy, which in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was influenced by notable figures such as Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, William of Ockham, and Marsilius of Padua, and early modern philosophy, which conventionally starts with René Descartes and his publication of the Discourse on Method in 1637. Philosophers usually divide the period less finely, jumping from medieval to early modern philosophy, on the assumption that no radical shifts in perspective took place in the centuries immediately before Descartes. Intellectual historians, however, take into considerations factors such as sources, approaches, audience, language, and literary genres in addition to ideas.
The Renaissance, that is, the period that extends roughly from the middle of the fourteenth century to the beginning of the seventeen century, was a time of intense, all-encompassing, and, in many ways, distinctive philosophical activity. A fundamental assumption of the Renaissance movement was that the remains of classical antiquity constituted an invaluable source of excellence to which debased and decadent modern times could turn in order to repair the damage brought about since the fall of the Roman Empire. It was often assumed that God had given a single unified truth to humanity and that the works of ancient philosophers had preserved part of this original deposit of divine wisdom. This idea not only laid the foundation for a scholarly culture that was centered on ancient texts and their interpretation, but also fostered an approach to textual interpretation that strove to harmonize and reconcile divergent philosophical accounts. Stimulated by newly available texts, one of the most important hallmarks of Renaissance philosophy is the increased interest in primary sources of Greek and Roman thought, which were previously unknown or little read. The renewed study of Neoplatonism, Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Skepticism eroded faith in the universal truth of Aristotelian philosophy and widened the philosophical horizon, providing a rich seedbed from which modern science and modern philosophy gradually emerged.
1. Aristotelianism
Improved access to a great deal of previously unknown literature from ancient Greece and Rome was an important aspect of Renaissance philosophy. The renewed study of Aristotle, however, was not so much because of the rediscovery of unknown texts, but because of a renewed interest in texts long translated into Latin but little studied, such as the Poetics, and especially because of novel approaches to well-known texts. From the early fifteenth century onwards, humanists devoted considerable time and energy to making Aristotelian texts clearer and more precise. In order to rediscover the meaning of Aristotle’s thought, they updated the Scholastic translations of his works, read them in the original Greek, and analyzed them with philological techniques. Many Renaissance Aristotelians read Aristotle for scientific or secular reasons, with no direct interest in religious or theological questions. Pietro Pomponazzi (1462–1525), one of the most important and influential Aristotelian philosophers of the Renaissance, developed his views entirely within the framework of natural philosophy.
2. Humanism
The humanist movement did not eliminate older approaches to philosophy, but contributed to change them in important ways, providing new information and new methods to the field. Humanists called for a radical change of philosophy and uncovered older texts that multiplied and hardened current philosophical discord. Some of the most salient features of humanist reform are the accurate study of texts in the original languages, the preference for ancient authors and commentators over medieval ones, and the avoidance of technical language in the interest of moral suasion and accessibility.
3. Platonism
During the Renaissance, it gradually became possible to take a broader view of philosophy than the traditional Peripatetic framework permitted. No ancient revival had more impact on the history of philosophy than the recovery of Platonism. The rich doctrinal content and formal elegance of Platonism made it a plausible competitor of the Peripatetic tradition. Renaissance Platonism was a product of humanism and marked a sharper break with medieval philosophy. Many Christians found Platonic philosophy safer and more attractive than Aristotelianism. The Neoplatonic conception of philosophy as a way toward union with God supplied many Renaissance Platonists with some of their richest inspiration. The Platonic dialogues were not seen as profane texts to be understood literally, but as sacred mysteries to be deciphered.
4. Hellenistic Philosophies
Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Skepticism underwent a revival over the course of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as part of the ongoing recovery of ancient literature and thought. The revival of Stoicism began with Petrarca, whose renewal of Stoicism moved along two paths. The first one was inspired by Seneca and consisted in the presentation, in works such as De vita solitaria (The Life of Solitude) and De otio religioso (On Religious Leisure), of a way of life in which the cultivation of the scholarly work and ethical perfection are one. The second was his elaboration of Stoic therapy against emotional distress in De secreto conflictu curarum mearum (On the Secret Conflict of My Worries), an inner dialogue of the sort prescribed by Cicero and Seneca, and in De remediis utriusque fortunae (Remedies for Good and Bad Fortune, 1366), a huge compendium based on a short apocryphal tract attributed at the time to Seneca.
5. New Philosophies of Nature
In 1543, Nicolaus Copernicus (1473–1543) published De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres), which proposed a new calculus of planetary motion based on several new hypotheses, such as heliocentrism and the motion of the earth. The first generation of readers underestimated the revolutionary character of the work and regarded the hypotheses of the work only as useful mathematical fictions. The result was that astronomers appreciated and adopted some of Copernicus’s mathematical models but rejected his cosmology. Yet, the Aristotelian representation of the universe did not remain unchallenged and new visions of nature, its principles, and its mode of operation started to emerge.

CONCLUSION
Renaissance, literally means “rebirth,” can be said to be the period in European civilization immediately following the Middle Ages and conventionally held to have been characterized by a surge of interest in Classical learning and values. The Renaissance also witnessed the discovery and exploration of new continents, the substitution of the Copernican for the Ptolemaic system of astronomy, the decline of the feudal system and the growth of commerce, and the invention or application of such potentially powerful innovations as paper, printing, the mariner’s compass, and gunpowder. To the scholars and thinkers of the day, however, it was primarily a time of the revival of Classical learning and wisdom after a long period of cultural decline and stagnation.

REFERENCES
• “Online Etymology Dictionary: “Renaissance””. Etymonline.com. Retrieved 2009-07-31.
• BBC Science and Nature, Leonardo da Vinci Retrieved May 12, 2007
• BBC History, Michelangelo Retrieved May 12, 2007
• Burke, P., The European Renaissance: Centre and Peripheries 1998)
• Strathern, Paul The Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance (2003)
• Peter Barenboim, Sergey Shiyan, Michelangelo: Mysteries of Medici Chapel, SLOVO, Moscow, 2006. ISBN 5-85050-825-2
• Encyclopædia Britannica, Renaissance, 2008, O.Ed.
• Har, Michael H. History of Libraries in the Western World, Scarecrow Press Incorporate, 1999, ISBN 0-8108-3724-2
• Norwich, John Julius, A Short History of Byzantium, 1997, Knopf, ISBN 0-679-45088-2
• Brotton, J., The Renaissance: A Very Short Introduction, OUP, 2006 ISBN 0-19-280163-5.
• Panofsky, Renaissance and Renascences in Western Art 1969:38; Panofsky’s chapter “‘Renaissance— self-definition or self-deception?” succinctly introduces the historiographical debate, with copious footnotes to the literature.

EVALUATE THE NOMADIC EDUCATION IN NIGERIA

EVALUATE THE NOMADIC EDUCATION IN NIGERIA
INTRODUCTION
Nomadic education is seen any member of a group of people who have no fixed home and move according to the seasons from place to place in search of food, water, and grazing land. It could be a person with no fixed residence who roams about; a wanderer.
Education occupies a center stage in Nigeria’s social and economic development. The importance of education has been adequately documented in the literature. Education serves as the spring board for social and economic change. “All who have mediated on the art of governing mankind have been convinced that the fate of empire depends on the education of the youth.” (Wennergreen, Antholt, and Whitaker 1984, 34). The importance of education in Nigeria is evident from the large budgetary allocation in the national Development Plans. The government of Nigeria believes that learning is the primary means of upgrading the socioeconomic condition of the rural population. This population, particularly the Fulani, are difficult to educate. With less than ten percent of the men and two percent of the women Fulani formally literate and numerate, the number of lettered men and women in western-style education among the Fulani falls below the national average.
Apart from the literacy gulf between the Fulani and the non-Fulani, there is a disparity in the attainment of different types of education among the Fulani. In a sample of 1,998 pastoral Fulani surveyed in this study, about half of them have Koranic education. Forty percent have no education, and only seven percent have either formal or both mainstream and Koranic education
To remove the chronic illiteracy among the mobile population of Nigeria, the government introduces the nomadic education program. The program has three broad goals: to raise the living standard of the rural community; to harness the potentials of the Fulani; and to bridge the literacy gap between the Fulani and rest of the society.
The nomadic education program started officially in November 1986, after the Yola National Workshop on Nomadic Education. The workshop resolved that: “…the nomads needed a fair deal through the provision of education and other social amenities to reciprocate their contribution to national building…” The National Commission for Nomadic Education (N.C.N.E.) began functioning in January 1990 with 206 schools, 1,500 students, and 499 teachers. Ninety-seven of the schools had permanent buildings. The rest of the schools operated in temporary structures or under the trees. Some schools had furniture, others used mats. The schools taught a modified curricula in English, arithmetic, social studies, and primary science, developed by the Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto. To adapt to the work rhythms, nomadic schools run morning and afternoon shifts, and children rotate between herding and schooling.
By January 1991, the N.C.N.E had spent 72,930 naira to produce textbooks in the four curricula areas. The first prototype of a collapsible, mobile classroom, manufactured by the Federal Science Equipment Manufacturing Center, Enugu, was tested on April 23, 1991.
APPROACHES TO NOMADIC EDUCATION IN NIGERIA
The nomadic education program has a multifaceted schooling arrangement to suit the diverse transhumant habits of the Fulani. Different agencies are involved in the educational process. These agencies include the Ministry of Education, Schools Management Board, the National Commission for Nomadic Education, the Agency for Mass Literacy, and the Scholarship Board. They work together to offer a mobile school system where the schools and the teachers move with the Fulani children.
Nomadic education in Nigeria is affected by defective policy, inadequate finance, faulty school placement, incessant migration of students, unreliable and obsolete data, and cultural and religious taboos. While some of these problems are solved by policy and infrastructure interventions, most of the problem are complex and difficult to solve. The persistence of these problems is causing the roaming Fulani to remain educationally backward.
A top-to-bottom planning, where the Fulani are the recipients rather than the planners of their education, dominates the nomadic education policies. For instance, during the first national workshop on nomadic education, only a few Fulani have been invited to attend. Ironically, it is at this workshop that far-reaching decisions that will affect the lives of the Fulani are taken.
Because of the non-participation of the Fulani in decision-making, a simplistic approach to educational planning is adopted. Advice on nomadic education are sometimes emotional, tactless, and ill-intentioned. Planners fail to take account of the government’s inability to provide specialized services. For example, just to impress the public, the government has rushed into policy pronouncements for mobile school system without considering the difficulties in getting teachers, monitoring students, and developing suitable curricula. The nomadic education curricula are unsuitable, if not an impediment, to learning. For example, the use of English for instruction at the elementary school level is inappropriate. Learning in the English language is difficult for the Fulani children who have yet to master their own language. The problem is that due to cost the government cannot develop Fulfulde language to replace English as a medium of instruction in schools. Furthermore, the curricular according to the Miyetti-Allah Cattle Breeders Association of Nigeria (M.A.C.B.A.N.) focus on teaching irrelevant subjects like cockroach breeding, how to play basketball, and how to climb mountings, things that do not interest the Fulani or that look down upon their cultures and lifestyles

CONCLUSION
To conclude, education plays a key role in the socioeconomic development of the Nigerian society. Despite the importance of education, many Fulani have not embraced it. Mobility, lack of fund, faulty curriculum design, and dependence on juvenile labor are some of the causes of paltry participation of the Fulani in schooling. Of serious concern to the Fulani also is the fear that Western education will have a Christian influence on the Fulani children who are predominantly Muslims. The Fulani express their grudges on the N.C.N.E. and its management, accusing it of alienating the Fulani in educational planning and implementation. Despite these obstacles, there is prospects that education will spread among the Fulani, especially with the bleakness in the future of pastoral nomadism.
The uncertainties of the movement of the Fulani makes educational planning and student monitoring difficult. Unscheduled out-migration due to environmental failures or conflicts between the farmers and the pastoral Fulani disrupts school operations and classroom composition. In one school visited, about half of the pupils who have attended the school in the previous season have moved. Many Fulani ascribe erratic attendance and low enrolment in school to habitual movement. Seventy-one percent of the Fulani interviewed in this research affirm that shifting settlements prevent the children from improving their literacy. As a result of the movement, the teachers face the extra task of adjusting their teaching to fit the dynamics of the transient population.

EPIDEMOLOGY OF EBOLA VIRUS.CAUSE, TRANSMISION, PREVENTION.

EPIDEMOLOGY OF EBOLA VIRUS.CAUSE, TRANSMISION, PREVENTION.
INTRODUCTION
The epidemiological investigations attempted to describe the outbreak of Ebola haemorrhagic fever (EbHF) by its distribution in time, in geography and amongst persons. Factors related to spread were also studied. These included possible modes of transmission, the incubation period, secondary attack rates and related risk factors. Serological surveys were undertaken to find evidence of prior Ebola virus disease in the area and asymptomatic infections occurring during the epidemic The cause of the epidemic (1) was searched for by attempts to find the index case and evidence of Ebola virus in some animal and insects
CAUSE
EVD is caused by four of five viruses classified in the genus Ebolavirus, family Filoviridae, order Mononegavirales. The four disease-causing viruses are Bundibugyo virus (BDBV), Sudan virus (SUDV), Taï Forest virus (TAFV), and one called simply, Ebola virus (EBOV, formerly Zaire Ebola virus)). Ebola virus is the sole member of the Zaire ebolavirus species, and the most dangerous of the known Ebola disease causing viruses, as well as being responsible for the largest number of outbreaks.
TRANSMISION
The virus may be acquired upon contact with blood or bodily fluids of an infected animal (commonly monkeys or fruit bats). Spread through the air has not been documented in the natural environment. Fruit bats are believed to carry and spread the virus without being affected. Once human infection occurs, the disease may spread between people as well.

PREVENTION
Since no none cure of the diseases have been found a number of preventive measures as outline below can be followed.
Behavioral changes
Ebola viruses are contagious, with prevention predominantly involving behavior changes, proper full-body personal protective equipment, and disinfection. Techniques to avoid infection involve not contacting infected blood or secretions, including from those who are dead. This involves suspecting and diagnosing the disease early and using standard precautions for all patients in the healthcare setting. Recommended measures when caring for those who are infected include isolating them, sterilizing equipment, and wearing protective clothing including masks, gloves, gowns, and goggles. Hand washing is important but can be difficult in areas where there is not even enough water for drinking.
Due to lack of proper equipment and hygienic practices, large-scale epidemics have occurred mostly in poor, isolated areas without modern hospitals or well-educated medical staff. Traditional burial rituals, especially those requiring embalming of bodies, should be discouraged or modified. Airline crews, who fly to these areas of the world, are taught to identify Ebola and isolate anyone who has symptoms.
Quarantine
Quarantine, also known as enforced isolation, is usually effective in decreasing spread. Governments often quarantine areas where the disease is occurring or individuals who may be infected. In the United States, the law allows quarantine of those infected with Ebola. The lack of roads and transportation may help slow the disease in Africa. During the 2014 outbreak, Liberia closed schools.
Vaccine
No vaccine is currently available for humans. The most promising candidates are DNA vaccines or vaccines derived from adenoviruses, vesicular stomatitis Indiana virus (VSIV) or filovirus-like particles (VLPs) because these candidates could protect nonhuman primates from ebolavirus-induced disease. DNA vaccines, adenovirus-based vaccines, and VSIV-based vaccines have entered clinical trials.
Vaccines have protected nonhuman primates. Immunization takes six months, which impedes the counter-epidemic use of the vaccines. Searching for a quicker onset of effectiveness, in 2003, a vaccine using an adenoviral (ADV) vector carrying the Ebola spike protein was tested on crab-eating macaques. Twenty-eight days later, they were challenged with the virus and remained resistant. A vaccine based on attenuated recombinant vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) vector carrying either the Ebola glycoprotein or the Marburg glycoprotein in 2005 protected nonhuman primates, opening clinical trials in humans. The study by October completed the first human trial, over three months giving three vaccinations safely inducing an immune response. Individuals for a year were followed, and, in 2006, a study testing a faster-acting, single-shot vaccine began; this new study was completed in 2008. Trying the vaccine on a strain of Ebola that more resembles one that infects humans is the next step.
THE IMPORTANCE OF EPIDEMOLOGY IN THE CONTROL OF EBOLA VIRUS
The importance of epidemology in the control of ebola virus cannot be over emphaised as Ebola virus is one of at least 30 known viruses capable of causing viral hemorrhagic fever syndrome. The genus Ebolavirus is currently classified into 5 separate species: Sudan ebolavirus, Zaire ebolavirus, Tai Forest (Ivory Coast) ebolavirus, Reston ebolavirus, and Bundibugyo ebolavirus.
At present, no specific anti-Ebolavirus agents are available but due to the epidemiology carried out on the virus agents that have been studied for the treatment or prevention of Ebola virus disease include the following:
• Ribavirin (possesses no demonstrable anti-Ebolavirus activity in vitro and has failed to protect Ebolavirus -infected primates)
• Nucleoside analogue inhibitors of S-adenosylhomocysteine hydrolase (SAH)
• Interferon beta
• Horse- or goat-derived immune globulins
• Human-derived convalescent immune globulin preparations
• Recombinant human interferon alfa-2
• Recombinant human monoclonal antibody against the envelope glycoprotein (GP) of Ebola virus
• DNA vaccines expressing either envelope GP or nucleocapsid protein (NP) genes of Ebola virus
• Activated protein C
• Recombinant inhibitor of factor VIIa/tissue factor
In those patients who do recover, recovery often requires months, and delays may be expected before full resumption of normal activities. Weight gain and return of strength are slow. Ebola virus continues to be present for many weeks after resolution of the clinical illness.

REFERENCES
1. Van der Groen, G. et al. (1978) Results of Ebola antibody surveys in various population groups, (cite symposium publication).
2. Germain, M. (1978) Collection of Mammals and Arthropods (Zaire), (cite symposium publication).
3. Piot, P. et al. (1978) Clinical aspects of Ebola virus infection in Yambuku area, Zaire, 1976, (cite symposium publication).
4. Wulff, H., Lange, J.V. (1975) Indirect immunofluorescence for diagnosis of Lassa Fever, Bull. WHO, 523 429-436.
5. Lebrun, A.J. (1963) Jungle yellow fever and its control in Gemena, Belgian Congo, Am. J. Trop. Med. Hyg., 12, 398-407.
6. Monath, T.P., Cassals, J. (1975) Diagnosis of Lassa fever and the isolation and management of patients, Bull. WHO, 52, 707-715.
7. Hornick, R.B., Woodward, T.E. (1971) Typhoid fever, in Harrison’s Principles and Practice of Medicine, edited by M.W. Wintrobe, G.W. Thorn, R.D. Adams, I.L. Bennett, K.J. Isselbacher, R.G. Petersdorf, McGraw Hill Book Company, New York, Sixth edition, 810-815.
8. Report of an International Commission (1978) Ebola Haemorrhagic fever in Zaire, 1976, Bull. WHO, 56, (in press).
9. Martini, G.A. (1971) Marburg Virus Disease, Clinical Syndrome, in Marburg Virus Disease, edited by G.A. Martini and R. Siegert, Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg- New York, 1-9.
10. Stojkovic, L.J. et al. (1971) Two cases of Corcopithecus Monkeys associated haemorrhagic fever, in Marburg Virus Disease, edited by G.A. Martini and R. Siegert, Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg – New York, 24-33.
11. Hennessen, W. &1971) Epidemiology of “Marburg Virus” disease, in Marburg Virus Disease, edited by G.A. Martini and R. Siegert, Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg – New York, 161-165.
12. Henderson, B.E. et al. (1971) Epidemiological studies in Uganda relating to the Marburg Agent, in Marburg Virus Disease, edited by G.A. Martini and R. Siegert, Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg – Yea York, 166-176.
13. Gear, J.S.S. et al. (1975) Outbreak of Marburg Virus disease in Johannesburg, Brit. Med. Journ., 4, 489-493.
14. Francis, D.P. et al. (1978) The Epidemiology of Ebola virus infection in the Sudan, (cite symposium publication).

ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION A GENDER PERSPECTIVE

ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION
A GENDER PERSPECTIVE

INTRODUCTION
Gender is the range of characteristics pertaining to, and differentiating between, masculinity and femininity. Depending on the context, these characteristics may include biological sex (i.e. the state of being male, female or intersex), sex-based social structures (including gender roles and other social roles), or gender identity. Gender is the prime reason in which women feel estranged and left out of the realm of science. As for women who did participate within science, shadowed the masculine voice in their publications or utilized their male partners to carry out their own findings of science. Society played a leading and influential role into women in the public and private sphere. As more women entered the primatology sciences, in which they were to leave society behind and delve deep into adapting within the dark premises of the wild jungles where years passed by them. Once women were allowed within the public sphere of science, they became secretive about their pregnancies and “took trips for their work”, to indulge in giving birth without experiencing the negative stigma of society. Some women disguised themselves in looking like men and experienced the outside societal judgments of working alongside male scientists.
Environmental degradation is the deterioration of the environment through depletion of resources such as air, water and soil; the destruction of ecosystems and the extinction of wildlife. It is defined as any change or disturbance to the environment perceived to be deleterious or undesirable. As indicated by the I=PAT equation, environmental impact (I) or degradation is caused by the combination of an already very large and increasing human population (P), continually increasing economic growth or per capita affluence (A), and the application of resource depleting and polluting technology (T).
Environmental degradation is one of the Ten Threats officially cautioned by the High Level Threat Panel of the United Nations. The United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction defines environmental degradation as “The reduction of the capacity of the environment to meet social and ecological objectives, and needs”. Environmental degradation is of many types. When natural habitats are destroyed or natural resources are depleted, the environment is degraded. Efforts to counteract this problem include environmental protection and environmental resources management.
WATER DETERIORATION
One major component of environmental degradation is the depletion of the resource of fresh water on Earth. Approximately only 2.5% of all of the water on Earth is fresh water, with the rest being salt water. 69% of the fresh water is frozen in ice caps located on Antarctica and Greenland, so only 30% of the 2.5% of fresh water is available for consumption. Fresh water is an exceptionally important resource, since life on Earth is ultimately dependent on it. Water transports nutrients and chemicals within the biosphere to all forms of life, sustains both plants and animals, and moulds the surface of the Earth with transportation and deposition of materials.
The current top three uses of fresh water account for 95% of its consumption; approximately 85% is used for irrigation of farmland, golf courses, and parks, 6% is used for domestic purposes such as indoor bathing uses and outdoor garden and lawn use, and 4% is used for industrial purposes such as processing, washing, and cooling in manufacturing centers. It is estimated that one in three people over the entire globe are already facing water shortages, almost one-fifth of the world’s population live in areas of physical water scarcity, and almost one quarter of the world’s population live in a developing country that lacks the necessary infrastructure to use water from available rivers and aquifers. Water scarcity is an increasing problem due to many foreseen issues in the future, including population growth, increased urbanization, higher standards of living, and climate change.
CLIMATE CHANGE AND TEMPERATURE
Climate change affects the Earth’s water supply in a large number of ways. It is predicted that the mean global temperature will rise in the coming years due to a number of forces affecting the climate, the amount of atmospheric CO2 will rise, and both of these will influence water resources; evaporation depends strongly on temperature and moisture availability, which can ultimately affect the amount of water available to replenish groundwater supplies.
Transpiration from plants can be affected by a rise in atmospheric CO2, which can decrease their use of water, but can also raise their use of water from possible increases of leaf area. Temperature increase can decrease the length of the snow season in the winter and increase the intensity of snowmelt in warmer seasons, leading to peak runoff of snowmelt earlier in the season, affecting soil moisture, flood and drought risks, and storage capacities depending on the area.
Warmer winter temperatures cause a decrease in snowpack, which can result in diminished water resources during summer. This is especially important at mid-latitudes and in mountain regions that depend on glacial runoff to replenish their river systems and groundwater supplies, making these areas increasingly vulnerable to water shortages over time; an increase in temperature will initially result in a rapid rise in water melting from glaciers in the summer, followed by a retreat in glaciers and a decrease in the melt and consequently the water supply every year as the size of these glaciers get smaller and smaller.
Thermal expansion of water and increased melting of oceanic glaciers from an increase in temperature gives way to a rise in sea level, which can affect the fresh water supply of coastal areas as well; as river mouths and deltas with higher salinity get pushed further inland, an intrusion of saltwater results in an increase of salinity in reservoirs and aquifers. Sea-level rise may also consequently be caused by a depletion of groundwater, as climate change can affect the hydrologic cycle in a number of ways. Uneven distributions of increased temperatures and increased precipitation around the globe results in water surpluses and deficits, but a global decrease in groundwater suggests a rise in sea level, even after meltwater and thermal expansion were accounted for, which can provide a positive feedback to the problems sea-level rise causes to fresh-water supply.
A rise in air temperature results in a rise in water temperature, which is also very significant in water degradation, as the water would become more susceptible to bacterial growth. An increase in water temperature can also affect ecosystems greatly because of a species’ sensitivity to temperature, and also by inducing changes in a body of water’s self-purification system from decreased amounts of dissolved oxygen in the water due to rises in temperature.
CLIMATE CHANGE AND PRECIPITATION
A rise in global temperatures is also predicted to correlate with an increase in global precipitation, but because of increased runoff, floods, increased rates of soil erosion, and mass movement of land, a decline in water quality is probable, while water will carry more nutrients, it will also carry more contaminants. While most of the attention about climate change is directed towards global warming and greenhouse effect, some of the most severe effects of climate change are likely to be from changes in precipitation, evapotranspiration, runoff, and soil moisture. It is generally expected that, on average, global precipitation will increase, with some areas receiving increases and some decreases.
Climate models show that while some regions should expect an increase in precipitation, such as in the tropics and higher latitudes, other areas are expected to see a decrease, such as in the subtropics; this will ultimately cause a latitudinal variation in water distribution. The areas receiving more precipitation are also expected to receive this increase during their winter and actually become drier during their summer, creating even more of a variation of precipitation distribution. Naturally, the distribution of precipitation across the planet is very uneven, causing constant variations in water availability in respective locations.
Changes in precipitation affect the timing and magnitude of floods and droughts, shift runoff processes, and alter groundwater recharge rates. Vegetation patterns and growth rates will be directly affected by shifts in precipitation amount and distribution, which will in turn affect agriculture as well as natural ecosystems. Decreased precipitation will deprive areas of water, causing water tables to fall and reservoirs and wetlands, rivers, and lakes to empty, and possibly an increase in evaporation and evapotranspiration, depending on the accompanied rise in temperature. Groundwater reserves will be depleted, and the remaining water has a greater chance of being of poor quality from saline or contaminants on the land surface.
POPULATION GROWTH
The available fresh water being affected by climate is also being stretched across an ever-increasing global population. It is estimated that almost a quarter of the global population is living in an area that is using more than 20% of their renewable water supply; water use will rise with population while the water is also being aggravated by decreases in streamflow and groundwater caused by climate change. Even though some areas may see an increase in freshwater supply from an uneven distribution of precipitation increase, an increased use of water supply is expected.
An increased population means increased withdrawals from the water supply for domestic, agricultural, and industrial uses, the largest of these being agriculture, believed to be the major non-climate driver of environmental change and water deterioration. The next 50 years will likely be the last period of rapid agricultural expansion, but the larger and wealthier population over this time will demand more agriculture.
Population increase over the last two decades, at least in the United States, has also been accompanied by a shift to an increase in urban areas from rural areas, which concentrates the demand for water into certain areas, and puts stress on the fresh water supply from industrial and human contaminants. Urbanization causes overcrowding and increasingly unsanitary living conditions, especially in developing countries, which in turn exposes an increasingly number of people to disease. About 79% of the world’s population is in developing countries, which lack access to sanitary water and sewer systems, giving rises to disease and deaths from contaminated water and increased numbers of disease-carrying insects.
AGRICULTURE
Agriculture is dependent on available soil moisture, which is directly affected by climate dynamics, with precipitation being the input in this system and various processes being the output, such as evapotranspiration, surface runoff, drainage, and percolation into groundwater. Changes in climate, especially the changes in precipitation and evapotranspiration predicted by climate models, will directly affect soil moisture, surface runoff, and groundwater recharge.
In areas with decreasing precipitation as predicted by the climate models, soil moisture may be substantially reduced. With this in mind, agriculture in most areas needs irrigation already, which depletes fresh water supplies both by the physical use of the water and the degradation agriculture causes to the water. Irrigation increases salt and nutrient content in areas that wouldn’t normally be affected, and damages streams and rivers from damming and removal of water. Fertilizer enters both human and livestock waste streams that eventually enter groundwater, while nitrogen, phosphorus, and other chemicals from fertilizer can acidify both soils and water. Certain agricultural demands may increase more than others with an increasingly wealthier global population, and meat is one commodity expected to double global food demand by 2050,[12] which directly affects the global supply of fresh water. Cows need water to drink, more if the temperature is high and humidity is low, and more if the production system the cow is in is extensive, since finding food takes more effort. Water is needed in processing of the meat, and also in the production of feed for the livestock. Manure can contaminate bodies of freshwater, and slaughterhouses, depending on how well they are managed, contribute waste such as blood, fat, hair, and other bodily contents to supplies of fresh water.
The transfer of water from agricultural to urban and suburban use raises concerns about agricultural sustainability, rural socioeconomic decline, food security, an increased carbon footprint from imported food, and decreased foreign trade balance. The depletion of fresh water, as applied to more specific and populated areas, increases fresh water scarcity among the population and also makes populations susceptible to economic, social, and political conflict in a number of ways; rising sea levels forces migration from coastal areas to other areas farther inland, pushing populations closer together breaching borders and other geographical patterns, and agricultural surpluses and deficits from the availability of water induce trade problems and economies of certain areas. Climate change is an important cause of involuntary migration and forced displacement.
WATER MANAGEMENT
The issue of the depletion of fresh water can be met by increased efforts in water management. While water management systems are often flexible, adaptation to new hydrologic conditions may be very costly. Preventative approaches are necessary to avoid high costs of inefficiency and the need for rehabilitation of water supplies, and innovations to decrease overall demand may be important in planning water sustainability.
Water supply systems, as they exist now, were based on the assumptions of the current climate, and built to accommodate existing river flows and flood frequencies. Reservoirs are operated based on past hydrologic records, and irrigation systems on historical temperature, water availability, and crop water requirements; these may not be a reliable guide to the future. Re-examining engineering designs, operations, optimizations, and planning, as well as re-evaluating legal, technical, and economic approaches to manage water resources are very important for the future of water management in response to water degradation. Another approach is water privatization; despite its economic and cultural effects, service quality and overall quality of the water can be more easily controlled and distributed. Rationality and sustainability is appropriate, and requires limits to overexploitation and pollution, and efforts in conservation.

CONCLUSION
Environmental degradation is the deterioration of the environment through depletion of resources such as air, water and soil; the destruction of ecosystems and the extinction of wildlife. It is defined as any change or disturbance to the environment perceived to be deleterious or undesirable.

REFERENCES
1. Johnson, D.L., S.H. Ambrose, T.J. Bassett, M.L. Bowen, D.E. Crummey, J.S. Isaacson, D.N. Johnson, P. Lamb, M. Saul, and A.E. Winter-Nelson. 1997. Meanings of environmental terms. Journal of Environmental Quality 26: 581–589.
2. Chertow, M.R., “The IPAT equation and its variants”, Journal of Industrial Ecology, 4 (4):13–29, 2001.
3. Huesemann, Michael H., and Joyce A. Huesemann (2011). Technofix: Why Technology Won’t Save Us or the Environment, Chapter 6, “Sustainability or Collapse?”, New Society Publishers, ISBN 0865717044.
4. “ISDR : Terminology”. The International Strategy for Disaster Reduction. 2004-03-31. Retrieved 2010-06-09.
5. ”Water.” Climate Institute. Web. Retrieved 2011-11-03.
6. Young, Gordon J., James Dooge, and John C. Rodda. Global Water Resource Issues. Cambridge UP, 2004.
7. Frederick, Kenneth D., and David C. Major. “Climate Change and Water Resources.” Climatic Change 37.1 (1997): p 7-23.
8. Ragab, Ragab, and Christel Prudhomme. “Soil and Water: Climate Change and Water Resources Management in Arid and Semi-Arid Regions: Prospective Challenges for the 21st Century.” Biosystems Engineering 81.1 (2002): p 3-34.
9. Konikow, Leonard F. “Contribution of Global Groundwater Depletion since 1990 to Sea-level Rise.” Geophysical Research Letters 38.17 (2011).
10. Raleigh, Clionadh, and Henrik Urdal. “Climate Change, Environmental Degradation, and Armed Conflict.” Political Geography 26.6 (2007): 674–94.