GreenHouse Effect and impacts

In recent years, there have been many alarming reports that the world’s climate is undergoing a significant change. All these reports provide strong evidence that the world temperatures are increasing day by day. This increase in global warming is caused by increased amounts of carbon dioxide around the earth. Most climatologists believe that the greenhouse effect is the likely cause of this global warming.

What is greenhouse effect? It is the gradual warming of the air surrounding the earth as a result of heat being trapped by environmental pollution. This is exemplified by the destruction and burning down of tropical rain forests, by traffic that clogs up city streets, by the rapid growth of industry, the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in packaging and manufacturing commercial products, the use of detergents such as washing powder and washing-up liquid and so on. The oceans are also said to be affected both because of human waste and pollution caused by industrial waste products, oil seeping from damaged super tanks and from other maritime disasters.
However, the main culprits for global warming are carbon dioxide gas, produced by the burning of fossil fuels and forests, and pollutants such as methane and chlorofluorocarbons. Climatologists predict that midway the next century, temperatures may have rise by as much as 4° C. this could catastrophically reduce mankind’s ability to grow food, destroy or severely damage wildlife and wilderness, raise sea levels and thereby flood coastal areas and farmland. The alarming news about Bangladesh is that as a result of the rise of the sea level, the lower southern part of the country may one day go under water.

value of time in our life

The value of time in our life and in this world knows no bound. Time has started its march from the very beginning of the creation of the world. This very ancient march has no end. But we have been sent to this world for a very short time. So, we have no alternative to make our life successful without the proper use of time.

Time never stays for anybody. It just goes on and on. The popular saying goes- “Time and tide wait for none”. So, every moment is very precious. Our success depends on the best use of these moments. We must make a proper division of our time and do our duties properly. Only then we will be able to go forward and reach our goal. On the other hand, if we fail to make the right use of our time, we will have to drag a miserable existence.
History provides many examples of the importance of time. One of Napoleon’s generals was a few minutes late in Water-loo’s battle field. As a result, Napoleon had to face a terrible defeat. On the other hand, Robert Bruce, Abraham Lincoln, Einstein, Aristotle and such other great persons led their lives to the top of success making the best use of time.
We are the best creation of Allah. We owe to Him because He hasls sent us to this beautiful earth. To pay off our debt to some extent, we must make proper use of time. Because anything good can be done or achieved only by making the best use of time.

The Great Wall of China

The Great Wall of China is the largest defense fortification and the greatest building enterprise ever undertaken by man. About 1500 miles long, this unique wall stretches from the Gulf of Cicily of the Yellow Sea along the northern frontier of China to Kansu Province in the west. The width of this wall varies from 15 to 40 feet at the base, and from 12 to 35 feet at the summit. Its height ranges from 20 feet to 50 feet.

It is the only structure on earth that can be identified from the moon.

Walled frontiers between the kingdoms in China date from at least the 4^th century B.C. In the 3^rd century B.C. the first emperor of “Ch’in”, after uniting China, linked up the existing walls and built new sections to create the Great Wall as a continuous unit. His purpose was to defend China from the Huns on the north. Watch towers and garrison stations were set at regular intervals in order to send signals and guard bulwark. The wall was so constructed in such a way that troops summoned by beacon fire could be quickly transported along its top.

The wall was built mostly of rubble, although the western sections are of tamped earth and important passes are of brick or masonry. The wall was frequently modified in later centuries. Some of its sections were built in the 15^th and 16^th centuries with new facilities of high towers. Before that, extensive repairs and extensions were made at various periods, notably during the Ming dynasty.

merits and demerits of internet

Demerits of Internet:

There are still a lot of people who see the Internet as a promoter of immorality with all the pornographic materials. Let us ask ourselves. Is that all that there is in the Internet? Once asked a student from a rural area in my class if they had Internet connection in their house.

The reply was his father would not allow due to the usual concern, you know what. Besides the demerit of X rated material there are problems of hacking, using email / chat to kidnap / cheat a person on the other side has also be seen.

Merits of Internet:

The Internet offers various useful tools for communication, among which we might mention electronic mail, the World Wide Web, newsgroups, remote access, file transfer and text-based and voiced-based chat. The net has become the most important e-mail system in the world because it connects so many people worldwide, creating a productivity gain.

Organizations use it to facilitate communication between employees and offices, and to communicate with customers and suppliers. Friends and family use e- mail in replacement to snail mail, due to its speed and flexibility.

Usenet Newsgroups or Forums are worldwide discussion groups in which people share information and ideas on defined topics of different ranges. Telnet is yet another communication function of the Internet.

It allows someone to be on one computer system while doing work on another. Information retrieval is the second basic Internet function. Many use of the Internet to locate and download some of the free, quality computer software that has been made available by developers on computers all over the world.

File transfer protocol (FTP) is used to access a remote computer and retrieve files from it. FTP is a quick and easy method if you know the remote computer site where the file is stored.

Once a file has been located, FTP makes transfer of the file to your own computer very easy. There are hosts of directories that have been made accessible for FTP to search for files and businesses can use them to locate files they require for their operations.

Like FTP, Gophers are another information retrieval tools that can be used to access files. A gopher is a computer client tool that enables the user to locate information stored on Internet gopher servers through a series of easy-to-use, hierarchical menus.

Most files and digital information that are accessible through FTP also are available through gophers. The Internet has thousands of gopher servers" sites throughout the world. What makes gopher sites easy to use is that each gopher site contains its own system of menus listing subject-matter topics, local files, and other relevant gopher sites.

There are also educational resources on the Internet. They are in various forms such as journals and database on various aspects of knowledge. For example there are sites where one can access online journals, or learn English.

These sites are of tremendous help to those who are doing academic research. There are also special homepages on special topics or subjects of interest. At the moment, not many people use the Internet for this purpose. It is time we encourage our students to visit these educational sites, especially the English language ones and this will go a long way to improve their level of English.

Commerce on the Internet is already a reality. The communication facilities which are on offer have rapidly become integrated as core business tools. Thus most of the business functions are communicative in nature. The emphasis to date has been on use of the Internet for communications with customers and other companies operating on collaborative ventures.

However, an increasing number are concentrating on transactions between businesses and on-line sales. The Internet Mall companies offer everything from books to flowers to travel. Trading partners can directly communicate with each other without passing through middlemen and inefficient multilayered procedures.

The Internet provides a public and universally available set of technologies for these purposes. Therefore, the Internet is rapidly becoming the technology of choice for electronic commerce because it offers businesses an even easier way to link with other businesses and individuals at a very low cost Handling transactions electronically can reduce transaction costs and delivery time for some goods, especially those that are purely digital (such as software, text Products, images, or videos Marketing Communication is another business function of the Internet.

As the term implies, marketing communication involves the use of communication media to market a product, goods and services. The nature of marketing communication at present is different from the mass communication paradigm of old. In the present era, marketing communication is more likely to involve expenditure on direct response marketing than involve the mass communication paradigm of old.

With the advent of the Internet, this traditional view of communication media has been altered. What we have now is the new many - to - many marketing communication model defining the web or Internet. This offers a radical departure from traditional marketing environments.

Concluding Remark:

The Internet is thus a boon for the Indian society since every activity or function of the society is covered. However, as it is at the moment, there are lots of benefits for businesses. It is therefore time we educate our society, especially the youngsters what to do on the net instead of denying them the opportunity to use it for fear of 'x' rated materials.

history of India

The history of India is one of the grand epics of world history and can be best described in the words of India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru as "a bundle of contradictions held together by strong but invisible threads". Indian history can be characterized as a work in progress, a continuous process of reinvention that can eventually prove elusive for those seeking to grasp its essential character.

The history of this astonishing sub continent dates back to almost 75000 years ago with the evidence of human activity of Homo sapiens. The Indus Valley Civilization which thrived in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent from 3300- 1300 BCE was the first major civilization in India.

Following is the history of India through the Ages:

The Pre Historic Era

1. The Stone Age:
   The Stone Age began 500,000 to 200,000 years ago and recent finds in Tamil Nadu (at C. 75000 years ago, before and after the explosion of the Toba Volcano) indicate the presence of the first anatomically humans in the area. Tools crafted by proto-humans that have been dated back to two million years have been discovered in the Northwestern part of the country.
   
2. The Bronze Age:
   The Bronze Age in the Indian subcontinent dates back to around 3300 BCE with the early Indus Valley Civilization. Historically part of ancient India, it is one of the world's earliest, urban civilizations, along with Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt. Inhabitants of this era developed new techniques in metallurgy and handicraft and produced copper, bronze, lead and tin.
   

Early Historic Period

1. Vedic Period:
   The Vedic Period is distinguished by the Indo-Aryan culture which was associated with the texts of Vedas, sacred to Hindus, and that were orally composed in Vedic Sanskrit. The Vedas are some of the oldest extant texts, next to those in Egypt and Mesopotamia. The Vedic era in the subcontinent lasted from about 1500-500 BCE, laying down the foundation of Hinduism and other cultural dimensions of early Indian society. The Aryans laid down Vedic civilization all over North India, particularly in the Gangetic Plain.
   
2. Mahajanapadas:
   This period saw the second major rise in urbanization in India after the Indus valley Civilization. The word "maha" means great and the word "janapada" means foothold of a tribe. In the later Vedic Age a number of small kingdoms or city states had mushroomed across the subcontinent and also find mention in early Buddhist and Jain literature as far back as 1000 BCE. By 500 BCE, sixteen "republics" or Mahajanapadas has been established, namely; Kasi, Kosala, Anga, Magadha, Vajji (or Vriji),Malla, Chedi, Vatsa (or Vamsa), Kuru, Panchala, Matsya, Surasena, Assaka, Avanti,Gandhara, and Kamboja.
   
   
   • Persian and Greek Conquests:
     Much of the Northwest subcontinent (currently Afghanistan and Pakistan) came under the rule of the Persian Achaemenid Empire in C. 520 BCE under the rule of Darius the Great and remained so for two centuries. In 326 BCE, Alexander the Great conquered Asia Minor and the Achaemenid Empire, when he reached the Northwest frontier of the Indian subcontinent he defeated King Porus and conquered most of Punjab.
     
   • Maurya Empire:
     The Maurya Empire, ruled by the Mauryan Dynasty from 322-185 BCE was a geographically extensive and mighty political and military empire in ancient India, established in the subcontinent by Chandragupta Maurya in Magadha (present day Bihar) and was it further thrived under Ashoka the Great.
     
3. The Mughal Empire:
   In 1526, Babur, a descendant of Timur and Gengis Kahn from Fergana Valler (present day Uzbekistan) swept across the Khyber Pass and established the Mughal Empire which covered modern day Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. The Mughal dynasty ruled most of the Indian subcontinent till 1600; after which it went into decline after 1707 and was finally defeated during India's first war of Independence in 1857.
   
4. Colonial Era:
   From the 16th century, European powers such as Portugal, Netherlands, France and the United Kingdom established trading posts in India. Later, they took advantage of internal conflicts and established colonies in the country.
   
5. The British Rule:
   The British Rule in India began with the coming of the British East India Company in 1600 and continued till Indian independence from British rule in 1947.
   
6. The Indian Independence Movement and Mahatma Gandhi:
   In the 20th century Mahatma Gandhi led millions of people in a national campaign of non-violent civil disobedience to contain independence from the British.
   
7. Independence and Partition:
   Religious tension between the Hindus and Muslims had been brewing over the years, especially in provinces like Punjab and Bengal. The Muslims were a minority and they did not feel secure in the prospect of an exclusively Hindu government and hence made them wary of independence. All through this Mahatama Gandhi called for unity among the two religious groups. The British, whose economy had been weakened after World War 2, decided to leave India and participated in the formation of an interim government. The British Indian territories gained independence in 1947, after being partitioned into the Union of India and the Dominion of Pakistan.

Important Industries of Pakistan

Industries, on the basis of the respective production, can be classified into three kinds:
a. Capital goods industries
b. Consumers goods industries
c. Agro-based industries
The details of these Pakistani industries are given as under:
a. CAPITAL GOODS INDUSTRIES:
The industries which produce further capital are called ‘capital goods industries’ therefore, machine, tools, parts, raw material producing industries are included in the capital goods industries. The capital goods industries in Pakistan are given below:
1. Iron and Steel Industry: No country, without the development of Iron and Steel Industry, can develop economically. All the developed countries are developed due to the developed iron and steel base. Pakistan does not produce steel according to her needs therefore; the gap between demand and supply is bridged up through import of steel. Pakistan Steel is the steel producing project which could, no doubt, be regarded as the pioneer of Heavy Industry in Pakistan.
2. Engineering Industry: Engineering Industry is of strategic importance for the industrial development. Modern Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia are economically prosperous because of development of engineering industry. This industry, due to reasons, could not develop in Pakistan therefore; the engineering goods are imported to cater the local needs. Heavy Mechanical Complex (HMC) is a big name in the Engineering industry in Pakistan. This complex has been manufacturing complete cement plants and sugar plants. Moreover, it is also producing Boilers, cranes, road making machinery and different items for Pakistan Railways.
3. Automobile Industry: Automobile industry create constructive effects on tractors, threshers and other agricultural tools, defence vehicles, automobile and other industries which include metal wires, fiber glass, paints, rubber, plastic and glass industry. The first automobile plant was established in Pakistan Automobile Corporation (PARCO) was established in 1972. Presently, Pak. Suzuki Motor Company, Hino Pak, Alghazi Tractors, Gandhara Nissan were producing automobiles with recent addition of Toyota and Honda Motors.
4. Electronic Goods Industries: Electronic goods include many items like electric fans, bulbs, Heaters, transformers, batteries etc. Siemens Engineering Company has been playing an important role in producing electronic goods. Electronic goods industries in Pakistan are engage in producing cold storage plants, air conditioners, radio, refrigerators, television, audio cassette etc.
5. Chemical Fertilizer Industry: Pakistan is an agrarian country therefore; fertilizer industry is of strategic importance here. The first chemical fertilizer plant was set up at Daud Khel and the second was established at Faisalabad. As a result of Nationalization programme in Pakistan, the private fertilizer plants were transferred to National Fertilizers. There are 10 chemical fertilizer factories in Pakistan which are producing Nitrogenous and Sulphate fertilizers.
6. Petro-Chemical Industry: All the goods that are made of petrol and natural gas are concerned with the Petro-chemical industry. These goods include artificial fiber, plastic detergent and rubber.
b. CONSUMER GOODS INDUSTRIES:
Consumer goods are the goods which are used to extract utility or the satisfaction directly like cement, sugar, leather etc. Following are the consumer goods industries in Pakistan.
1. Pharmaceutical Industry: At the time of inception of Pakistan in 1947, there was pharmaceutical industry in Pakistan and all the medicines used to be imported. P.I Dogar Company and Frontier Chemical Works were making some minor medicine at the time at Lahore and Peshawar. Today there are 235 licensed pharmaceutical units out of which 32 are multipurpose.
2. Leather Goods Industry: Pakistan, as an agrarian country, is rich in cattle wealth like oxen, cow, buffalo, goats, camel, sheep etc. Moreover, Pakistan is also a Muslims country where meet is main in food items. This is the reason that the raw materials (hides and skin) for leather goods industry is abundantly available here. The future of leather goods industry in Pakistan is very bright. The centers of leather goods industry in Pakistan are at Karachi, Hyderabad, Multan, and Lahore. The leather goods include shoes, leather begs, leather garments etc.
3. Cement Industry: There were two cement manufacturing factories in Pakistan in 1947; Daimian Cement and Associated Company of Bombay. In the light of importance of cement for the construction work in the country one cement plant was established in Hyderabad with the name Zeal Pak and white cement plant at Daud Khel named Maple Leaf. Presently, there are 22 cement plants in Pakistan out of which 8 in Sindh, 9 in Punjab, 3 in NWFP, one in Islamabad and one plant in Baluchistan. The cement plant under completion is National Cement Plant, Cement Plant of Petro, Army Welfare Cement Project and Associated Cement Wah.
c. AGRO-BASED INDUSTRIES:
Agro-based industries which, for their raw material, depend on agriculture like textile, ghee, sugar edible oil, tobacco, fruit/vegetable processing industries. Agro-based industries of Pakistan are given as under:
1. Cotton Textile Industry: Cotton textile industry is the most important industry in Pakistan because it contributes 60 percent of total exports of the country and it is 18 percent of total heavy industrial output. Cotton is the raw material for cotton textile industry which is the cash crop of agricultural sector. Textile industry developed fast during fifties and sixties but after the Nationalization process of 1972 in Pakistan it has been converted into ‘sick’ industry. Presently, there are 503 textile factories in Pakistan.
2. Sugar Industry: After textile, sugar industry occupies the second important place in Pakistan. Sugar cane and Sugar beat are the raw materials for sugar industry which are the agricultural crops. There are 74 sugar mills in Pakistan out of which 38 are in Punjab, 30 in Sindh and 6 are in NWFP. Sucrose proportion in sugar cane of Sindh are embodied more than that of sugar cane of Punjab, therefore, concentration for installing the new factories is being given in Sindh.
3. Edible Oil/Ghee Industry: Edible/Ghee industry is the biggest one which uses imported edible oil. Edible oil is achieved seeds of soya bean, sunflower and cotton and cotton and Canola as well s palm. All these are the production of agricultural sector. Pakistan imports soya bean and palm oil in bulk. There are 9 ghee producing plants with Ghee Corporation of Pakistan.
4. Tobacco Industry: Tobacco is the cash crop of agricultural sector. ‘Virgina’; the best tobacco is cultivated in Peshawar. The other kinds of tobacco are cultivated in Rawalpindi, Multan, Lahore, Bahawalpur and Khairpur Divisions. Tobacco is also cultivated in Baluchistan. Mostly, ‘Filter’ tobacco is produced in Pakistan which is used in Cigarette Industry. Apart from Filter, other kinds of tobacco are Virgina, Flue cured, Verly and While Ash. There are 123 cigarette factories in Pakistan. Eighty four percent of total market demand of cigarette is met by 3 big cigarette companies including Pakistan Tobacco Company, Lexon Tobacco and Premier Tobacco Company.

Secularization

Secularization or generally refers to the transformation by which a society migrates from close identification with religious institutions to a more separated relationship. It is also the name given to a general belief about history, namely that the development of society progresses toward modernization and lessening dependence on religion as religion loses its position of authority.

Secularization has many levels of meaning, both as a theory and a historical process. Social theorists such as Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Max Weber, and Émile Durkheim, postulated that the modernization of society would include a decline in levels of religiosity. Study of this process seeks to determine the manner in which, or extent to which religious creeds, practices and institutions are losing their social significance (if at all).

The term also has additional meanings, primarily historical. Applied to church property, secularization involves the abandonment of goods by the church where it is sold to purchasers after the government seizes the property, which most commonly happens after reasonable negotiations and arrangements are made. In Catholic theology, the term can also denote the permission or authorization given for an individual (typically clergy, who become secular clergy) to live outside his or her religious colony (monastery), either for a fixed or permanent period.