Pontiac
Pontiac was a car brand, owned and sold by General Motors. Introduced as a companion make for GM's more expensive line of Oakland automobiles, Pontiac overtook Oakland in popularity and supplanted its parent brand by 1933. Sold in the United States and Mexico by GM, Pontiac was advertised as the performance division of General Motors from the 1960s onward. In the hierarchy of GM's five divisions, it slotted above Chevrolet, but below Oldsmobile and Cadillac. Amid late 2000s financial problems and restructuring efforts, GM announced in 2008 it would follow the same path with Pontiac as it had with Oldsmobile in 2004 and discontinued manufacturing and marketing vehicles under that brand by the end of 2010; the last Pontiac badged cars were built in December 2009, with one final vehicle in January 2010. Franchise agreements for Pontiac dealers expired October 31, 2010, leaving GM to focus on its four remaining North American brands: Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC; the Pontiac brand was introduced by General Motors in 1926 as the companion marque to GM's Oakland division, shared the GM A platform.
Purchased by General Motors in 1909, Oakland continued to produce modestly priced automobiles until 1931 when it was renamed Pontiac. It was named after the famous Ottawa chief who had given his name to the city of Pontiac, Michigan where the car was produced. Within months of its introduction, Pontiac was outselling Oakland, a 1920s Chevrolet with a six-cylinder engine installed. Body styles offered included a sedan with both two and four doors, Landau Coupe, with the Sport Phaeton, Sport Landau Sedan, Sport Cabriolet and Sport Roadster; as a result of Pontiac's rising sales, versus Oakland's declining sales, Pontiac became the only companion marque to survive its parent, with Oakland ceasing production in 1932. Pontiacs were manufactured from knock-down kits at GM's short-lived Japanese factory at Osaka Assembly in Osaka, Japan from 1927-1941. Pontiac produced cars offering 40 hp 186.7 cu in L-head straight 6-cylinder engines in the Pontiac Chief of 1927. The Chief sold 39,000 units within six months of its appearance at the 1926 New York Auto Salon, hitting 76,742 at twelve months.
The next year, it became the top-selling six in the U. S. ranking seventh in overall sales. By 1933, it had moved up to producing the least expensive cars available with straight eight engines; this was done by using many components from the 6-cylinder Chevrolet Master, such as the body, but installing a large chrome strip on the top and center of the front hood Pontiac called the "Silver Streak". Only eight cylinder engines were offered in 1933 and 1934, displacing 223.4 cubic inches for 77 HP. In the late 1930s, Pontiac used a Buick "torpedo" body for one of its models, just prior to its being used by Chevrolet, earning some media attention for the marque. An unusual feature of the "torpedo"-bodied exhibition car was that, with push of a button, the front half of the body would open showing the engine and the car's front seat interior. 1937 was a year of major change for Pontiac, all models except the new station wagon now using the all steel B-body shared with Oldsmobile, LaSalle and small Buicks.
New stronger X frame had Hotchkiss drive using a two part drive shaft. The eight-cylinder had a 122-inch wheelbase. Both engines had increased displacements, the six going to 222.7 cubic inches for 85 HP, the eight to 248.9 for 100 HP. In 1940 & 42, Pontiac was built on three different bodies; the "A" body with Chevrolet, the "B" body shared with Oldsmobile and Buick and the "C" body shared with the large Oldsmobile and the small Cadillac. The "C" body for 1940 was called the Torpedo. In 1941 all Pontiac's were called Torpedoes. On 2 February 1942, a Pontiac was the last civilian automobile manufactured in the United States during World War II, as all automobile factories converted to military production. For an extended period of time—prewar through the early 1950s—the Pontiac was a quiet, solid car, but not powerful, it came with a flathead straight eight. Straight 8s were less expensive to produce than the popular V8s, but they were heavier and longer. Additionally, the long crankshaft suffered from excessive flex, restricting straight 8s to a low compression ratio with a modest redline.
However, in this application, inexpensive flatheads were not a liability. From 1946 to 1948, all Pontiac models were 1942 models with minor changes; the Hydra-matic automatic transmission was introduced in 1948 and helped Pontiac sales grow though their cars and Streamliners, were becoming out of date. The first all-new Pontiac models appeared in 1949, they incorporated styling cues such as lower body lines and rear fenders that were integrated in the rear-end styling of the car. Along with new styling came a new model. Continuing the Native American theme of Pontiac, the Chieftain line was introduced to replace the Torpedo; these were built on the GM B-Body platform and featured different styling than the more conservative Streamliner. In 1950, the Catalina pillarless hardtop coupe was introduced as a "halo" model, much like the Chevrolet Bel Air of the same year. In 1952, Pontiac discontinued the Streamliner and replaced it with additional models in the Chieftain line built on the GM A-body platform.
This single model line continued until 1954. The Star Chief was created by adding an 11-inch extension to the A-body platform creating a 124-inch wheelbase; the 1953 models were the first to have one-p
Census
A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population. The term is used in connection with national population and housing censuses; the United Nations defines the essential features of population and housing censuses as "individual enumeration, universality within a defined territory and defined periodicity", recommends that population censuses be taken at least every 10 years. United Nations recommendations cover census topics to be collected, official definitions and other useful information to co-ordinate international practice; the word is of Latin origin: during the Roman Republic, the census was a list that kept track of all adult males fit for military service. The modern census is essential to international comparisons of any kind of statistics, censuses collect data on many attributes of a population, not just how many people there are. Censuses began as the only method of collecting national demographic data, are now part of a larger system of different surveys.
Although population estimates remain an important function of a census, including the geographic distribution of the population, statistics can be produced about combinations of attributes e.g. education by age and sex in different regions. Current administrative data systems allow for other approaches to enumeration with the same level of detail but raise concerns about privacy and the possibility of biasing estimates. A census can be contrasted with sampling in which information is obtained only from a subset of a population. Modern census data are used for research, business marketing, planning, as a baseline for designing sample surveys by providing a sampling frame such as an address register. Census counts are necessary to adjust samples to be representative of a population by weighting them as is common in opinion polling. Stratification requires knowledge of the relative sizes of different population strata which can be derived from census enumerations. In some countries, the census provides the official counts used to apportion the number of elected representatives to regions.
In many cases, a chosen random sample can provide more accurate information than attempts to get a population census. A census is construed as the opposite of a sample as its intent is to count everyone in a population rather than a fraction. However, population censuses rely on a sampling frame to count the population; this is the only way to be sure that everyone has been included as otherwise those not responding would not be followed up on and individuals could be missed. The fundamental premise of a census is that the population is not known and a new estimate is to be made by the analysis of primary data; the use of a sampling frame is counterintuitive as it suggests that the population size is known. However, a census is used to collect attribute data on the individuals in the nation; this process of sampling marks the difference between historical census, a house to house process or the product of an imperial decree, the modern statistical project. The sampling frame used by census is always an address register.
Thus it is not known how many people there are in each household. Depending on the mode of enumeration, a form is sent to the householder, an enumerator calls, or administrative records for the dwelling are accessed; as a preliminary to the dispatch of forms, census workers will check any address problems on the ground. While it may seem straightforward to use the postal service file for this purpose, this can be out of date and some dwellings may contain a number of independent households. A particular problem is what are termed'communal establishments' which category includes student residences, religious orders, homes for the elderly, people in prisons etc; as these are not enumerated by a single householder, they are treated differently and visited by special teams of census workers to ensure they are classified appropriately. Individuals are counted within households and information is collected about the household structure and the housing. For this reason international documents refer to censuses of housing.
The census response is made by a household, indicating details of individuals resident there. An important aspect of census enumerations is determining which individuals can be counted from which cannot be counted. Broadly, three definitions can be used: de facto residence; this is important to consider individuals who have temporary addresses. Every person should be identified uniquely as resident in one place but where they happen to be on Census Day, their de facto residence, may not be the best place to count them. Where an individual uses services may be more useful and this is at their usual, or de jure, residence. An individual may be represented at a permanent address a family home for students or long term migrants, it is necessary to have a precise definition of residence to decide whether visitors to a country should be included in the population count. This is becoming more important as students travel abroad for education for a period of several years. Other groups causing problems of enumeration are new born babies, people away on holiday, people moving home around census day, people without a fixed address.
People having second homes because of working in another part of the country or retaining a holiday cottage are dif
Population density
Population density is a measurement of population per unit area or unit volume. It is applied to living organisms, most of the time to humans, it is a key geographical term. In simple terms population density refers to the number of people living in an area per kilometer square. Population density is population divided by total land water volume, as appropriate. Low densities may lead to further reduced fertility; this is called the Allee effect after the scientist. Examples of the causes in low population densities include: Increased problems with locating sexual mates Increased inbreeding For humans, population density is the number of people per unit of area quoted per square kilometer or square mile; this may be calculated for a county, country, another territory or the entire world. The world's population is around 7,500,000,000 and Earth's total area is 510,000,000 square kilometers. Therefore, the worldwide human population density is around 7,500,000,000 ÷ 510,000,000 = 14.7 per km2. If only the Earth's land area of 150,000,000 km2 is taken into account human population density is 50 per km2.
This includes all continental and island land area, including Antarctica. If Antarctica is excluded population density rises to over 55 people per km2. However, over half of the Earth's land mass consists of areas inhospitable to human habitation, such as deserts and high mountains, population tends to cluster around seaports and fresh-water sources. Thus, this number by itself does not give any helpful measurement of human population density. Several of the most densely populated territories in the world are city-states and dependencies; these territories have a small area and a high urbanization level, with an economically specialized city population drawing on rural resources outside the area, illustrating the difference between high population density and overpopulation The potential to maintain the agricultural aspects of deserts is limited as there is not enough precipitation to support a sustainable land. The population in these areas are low. Therefore, cities in the Middle East, such as Dubai, have been increasing in population and infrastructure growth at a fast pace.
Cities with high population densities are, by some, considered to be overpopulated, though this will depend on factors like quality of housing and infrastructure and access to resources. Most of the most densely populated cities are in Southeast Asia, though Cairo and Lagos in Africa fall into this category. City population and area are, however dependent on the definition of "urban area" used: densities are invariably higher for the central city area than when suburban settlements and the intervening rural areas are included, as in the areas of agglomeration or metropolitan area, the latter sometimes including neighboring cities. For instance, Milwaukee has a greater population density when just the inner city is measured, the surrounding suburbs excluded. In comparison, based on a world population of seven billion, the world's inhabitants, as a loose crowd taking up ten square feet per person, would occupy a space a little larger than Delaware's land area; the Gaza Strip has a population density of 5,046 pop/km.
Although arithmetic density is the most common way of measuring population density, several other methods have been developed to provide a more accurate measure of population density over a specific area. Arithmetic density: The total number of people / area of land Physiological density: The total population / area of arable land Agricultural density: The total rural population / area of arable land Residential density: The number of people living in an urban area / area of residential land Urban density: The number of people inhabiting an urban area / total area of urban land Ecological optimum: The density of population that can be supported by the natural resources Demography Human geography Idealized population Optimum population Population genetics Population health Population momentum Population pyramid Rural transport problem Small population size Distance sampling List of population concern organizations List of countries by population density List of cities by population density List of city districts by population density List of English districts by population density List of European cities proper by population density List of United States cities by population density List of islands by population density List of U.
S. states by population density List of Australian suburbs by population density Selected Current and Historic City, Ward & Neighborhood Density Duncan Smith / UCL Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis. "World Population Density". Exploratory map shows data from the Global Human Settlement Layer produced by the European Commission JRC and the CIESIN Columbia University
Field Museum of Natural History
The Field Museum of Natural History known as The Field Museum, is a natural history museum in Chicago, is one of the largest such museums in the world. The museum maintains its status as a premier natural-history museum through the size and quality of its educational and scientific programs, as well as due to its extensive scientific-specimen and artifact collections; the diverse, high-quality permanent exhibitions, which attract up to two million visitors annually, range from the earliest fossils to past and current cultures from around the world to interactive programming demonstrating today's urgent conservation needs. The museum is named in honor of its first major benefactor, the department-store magnate Marshall Field; the museum and its collections originated from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition and the artifacts displayed at the fair. The museum maintains a temporary exhibition program of traveling shows as well as in-house produced topical exhibitions; the professional staff maintains collections of over 24 million specimens and objects that provide the basis for the museum’s scientific-research programs.
These collections include the full range of existing biodiversity, meteorites and rich anthropological collections and cultural artifacts from around the globe. The museum's library, which contains over 275,000 books and photo archives focused on biological systematics, evolutionary biology, archaeology and material culture, supports the museum’s academic-research faculty and exhibit development; the academic faculty and scientific staff engage in field expeditions, in biodiversity and cultural research on every continent, in local and foreign student training, in stewardship of the rich specimen and artifact collections. They work in close collaboration with public programming exhibitions and education initiatives; the Field Museum and its collections originated from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition and the artifacts displayed at the fair. In order to house for future generations the exhibits and collections assembled for the Exposition, Edward Ayer convinced the merchant Marshall Field to fund the establishment of a museum.
Titled the Columbian Museum of Chicago in honor of its origins, the Field Museum was incorporated by the State of Illinois on September 16, 1893, for the purpose of the "accumulation and dissemination of knowledge, the preservation and exhibition of artifacts illustrating art, archaeology and history." The Columbian Museum of Chicago occupied the only building remaining from the World's Columbian Exposition in Jackson Park, the Palace of Fine Arts. It is now home to the Chicago Museum of Industry. In 1905, the museum's name was changed to the Field Museum of Natural History to honor its first major benefactor and to reflect its focus on the natural sciences. During the period from 1943 to 1966, the museum was known as the Chicago Natural History Museum. In 1921, the Museum moved from its original location in Jackson Park to its present site on Chicago Park District property near downtown. By the late 1930s the Field had emerged as one of the three premier museums in the United States, the other two being the American Museum of Natural History in New York and the National Museum of Natural History at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC.
The museum has maintained its reputation through continuous growth, expanding the scope of collections and its scientific research output, in addition to the its award-winning exhibitions, outreach publications, programs. The Field Museum is part of Chicago’s lakefront Museum Campus that includes the John G. Shedd Aquarium and the Adler Planetarium. In 2015, it was reported that an employee had defrauded the museum of $900,000 over a seven-year period to 2014. Animal exhibitions and dioramas such as Nature Walk, Mammals of Asia, Mammals of Africa that allow visitors an up-close look at the diverse habitats that animals inhabit. Most notably featured are the infamous man-eating lions of Tsavo. Evolving Planet follows the evolution of life on Earth over 4 billion years; the exhibit showcases fossils of single-celled organisms, Permian synapsids, extinct mammals, early hominoids. The Field Museum's non-mammalian synapsid collection consists of over 1100 catalogued specimens, including 46 holotypes.
The collection of basal synapsids includes 29 holotypes of caseid, edaphosaurid and sphenacodontid species - 88% of catalogued specimens. Inside Ancient Egypt offers a glimpse into. Twenty-three human mummies are on display as well as many mummified animals; the exhibit features a three-story replica of the mastaba tomb of the son of Unas. Displayed are: an ancient marketplace showing artifacts of everyday life, a shrine to the cat goddess Bastet, dioramas showing the afterlife preparation process for the dead; the Ancient Americas displays 13,000 years of human ingenuity and achievement in the Western Hemisphere, where hundreds of diverse societies thrived long before the arrival of Europeans. In this large permanent exhibition visitors can learn the epic story of the peopling of these continents, from the Arctic to the tip of South America. Cultural exhibitions include sections on Tibet and China, where visitors can view traditional clothing. There is an exhibit on life in Africa, where visitors can learn about the many different cultures on the continent, an exhibit where visitors may "visit" several Pacific Islands.
The museum houses an authentic 19th century Māori Meeting House, Ruatepupuke II, from Tokomaru Bay, New Zealand. The Grainger Hall of Gems and its large collection o
1930 United States Census
The Fifteenth United States Census, conducted by the Census Bureau one month from April 1, 1930, determined the resident population of the United States to be 122,775,046, an increase of 13.7 percent over the 106,021,537 persons enumerated during the 1920 Census. The 1930 Census collected the following information: address name relationship to head of family home owned or rented if owned, value of home if rented, monthly rent whether owned a radio set whether on a farm sex race age marital status and, if married, age at first marriage school attendance literacy birthplace of person, their parents if foreign born: language spoken at home before coming to the U. S. year of immigration whether naturalized ability to speak English occupation and class of worker whether at work previous day veteran status if Indian: whether of full or mixed blood tribal affiliationFull documentation for the 1930 census, including census forms and enumerator instructions, is available from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series.
The original census enumeration sheets were microfilmed by the Census Bureau in 1949. The microfilmed census is located on 2,667 rolls of microfilm, available from the National Archives and Records Administration. Several organizations host images of the microfilmed census online, digital indices. Microdata from the 1930 census are available through the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series. Aggregate data for small areas, together with electronic boundary files, can be downloaded from the National Historical Geographic Information System. 1930 Census Questions Hosted at CensusFinder.com 1931 U. S Census Report Contains 1930 Census results Historic US Census data 1930Census.com: 1930 United States Census for Genealogy & Family History Research 1930 Interactive US Census Find stories and more attached to names on the 1930 US census
Reader's Digest
Reader's Digest is an American general-interest family magazine, published ten times a year. Based in Chappaqua, New York, it is now headquartered in Midtown Manhattan; the magazine was founded by DeWitt Wallace and Lila Bell Wallace. For many years, Reader's Digest was the best-selling consumer magazine in the United States. According to Mediamark Research, Reader's Digest reaches more readers with household incomes of $100,000+ than Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Inc. combined. Global editions of Reader's Digest reach an additional 40 million people in more than 70 countries, via 49 editions in 21 languages; the periodical has a global circulation of 10.5 million, making it the largest paid circulation magazine in the world. It is published in Braille, audio, in a large type called Reader's Digest Large Print; the magazine is compact, with its pages half the size of most American magazines. Hence, in the summer of 2005, the U. S. edition adopted the slogan "America in your pocket".
In January 2008, it was changed to "Life well shared". In 1922, DeWitt Wallace started the magazine while he was recovering from shrapnel wounds received in World War I. Wallace had the idea to gather a sampling of favorite articles on many subjects from various monthly magazines, sometimes condensing and rewriting them, to combine them into one magazine. Since its inception, Reader's Digest has maintained a conservative and anti-Communist perspective on political and social issues; the Wallaces hoped the journal could provide $5,000 of net income. Mr. Wallace’s assessment of what the potential mass-market audience wanted to read led to rapid growth. By 1929, the magazine had a gross income of $900,000 a year; the first international edition was published in the United Kingdom in 1938. By the 40th anniversary of Reader’s Digest, there were 40 international editions, in 13 languages and Braille, it was the largest-circulating journal in Canada, Spain, Sweden and other countries, with a total international circulation of 23 million.
The magazine's format for several decades consisted of 30 articles per issue, along with a vocabulary page, a page of "Amusing Anecdotes" and "Personal Glimpses", two features of funny stories entitled "Humor in Uniform" and "Life in these United States", a lengthier article at the end condensed from a published book. These were all listed in the Table of Contents on the front cover; each article was prefaced by a simple line drawing. In recent years, the format has evolved into flashy, colorful eye-catching graphics throughout, many short bits of data interspersed with full articles; the Table of Contents is now contained inside. From 2003 to 2007, the back cover featured "Our America", paintings of Rockwell-style whimsical situations by artist C. F. Payne; the first "Word Power" column of the magazine was published in the January 1945 edition, written by Wilfred J. Funk. In December 1952 the magazine published "Cancer by the Carton", a series of articles that linked smoking with lung cancer.
This first brought the dangers of smoking to the attention of a public which, up to had ignored the health threats. From 2002 through 2006, Reader's Digest conducted a vocabulary competition in schools throughout the United States called Reader's Digest National Word Power Challenge. In 2007, the magazine said it had decided not to have the competition for the 2007–08 school year: "...but rather to use the time to evaluate the program in every respect, including scope and model for implementation."In 2006, the magazine published three more local-language editions in Slovenia and Romania. In October 2007, the Digest expanded into Serbia; the magazine's licensee in Italy stopped publishing in December 2007. The magazine launched in The People's Republic of China in 2008. For 2010, the U. S. edition of the magazine planned to decrease its circulation to 5.5 million, from 8 million, to publish 10 times a year rather than 12, to increase digital offerings. It cut its circulation guarantee for advertisers to 5.5 million copies from 8 million.
In announcing that decision, in June 2009, the company said that it planned to reduce its number of celebrity profiles and how-to features, increase the number of inspiring spiritual stories and stories about the military. Beginning in January 2013, the US edition was increased back to 12 times a year. In 1990, the magazine's parent company, The Reader's Digest Association, Inc. became a publicly traded corporation. From 2005 through 2010, RDA reported a net loss each year. In March 2007, Ripplewood Holdings LLC led a consortium of private equity investors who bought the company through a leveraged buy-out for US$2.8 billion, financed by the issuance of US$2.2 billion of debt. Ripplewood invested $275 million of its own money, had partners including Rothschild Bank of Zürich and GoldenTree Asset Management of New York; the private equity deal tripled the association's interest payments, to $148 million a year. On August 24, 2009, RDA announced it had filed with the U. S. Bankruptcy court a pre-arranged Chapter 11 bankruptcy, in order to continue operations, to restructure the US$2.2 billion debt undertaken by the leveraged buy-out transaction.
The company emerged from bankruptcy with the lenders exchanging debt for equity, Ripplewood's entire equity investment was extinguished. In April 2010, the UK arm was sold to its management, it has a licensing deal with the U. S. company to continue publishing the UK edition. On February 17, 2013, RDA Holding filed for bankruptcy a second time; the company was purchased for £1 by Mike Luckwell, a venture capita
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