Public works
Public works are a broad category of infrastructure projects and constructed by the government, for recreational and health and safety uses in the greater community. They include public buildings, transport infrastructure, public spaces, public services, other long-term, physical assets and facilities. Though interchangeable with public infrastructure and public capital, public works does not carry an economic component, thereby being a broader term. Public works has been encouraged since antiquity. For example, the Roman emperor Nero encouraged the construction of various infrastructure projects during widespread deflation. Public works is a multi-dimensional concept in economics and politics, touching on multiple arenas including: recreation, economy and neighborhood, it represents any constructed object that augments a nation's physical infrastructure. Municipal infrastructure, urban infrastructure, rural development represent the same concept but imply either large cities or developing nations' concerns respectively.
The terms public infrastructure or critical infrastructure are at times used interchangeably. However, critical infrastructure includes public works as well as facilities like hospitals and telecommunications systems and views them from a national security viewpoint and the impact on the community that the loss of such facilities would entail. Furthermore, the term public works has been expanded to include digital public infrastructure projects; the first nationwide digital public works project is an effort to create an open source software platform for e-voting. Reflecting increased concern with sustainability, urban ecology and quality of life, efforts to move towards sustainable municipal infrastructure are common in developed nations in European Union and Canada. A public employment programme' or'public works programme' is the provision of employment by the creation of predominantly public goods at a prescribed wage for those unable to find alternative employment; this functions as a form of social safety net.
PWPs are activities which entail the payment of a wage by an Agent. One particular form of public works, that of offering a short-term period of employment, has come to dominate practice in regions such as Sub-Saharan Africa. Applied in the short term, this is appropriate as a response to transient shocks and acute labour market crises. Investing in public works projects in order to stimulate the general economy has been a popular policy measure since the economic crisis of the 1930s. More recent examples are the 2008–2009 Chinese economic stimulus program, the 2008 European Union stimulus plan, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. While it is argued that capital investment in public works can be used to reduce unemployment, opponents of internal improvement programs argue that such projects should be undertaken by the private sector, not the public sector, because public works projects are characteristic of socialism. However, in the private sector, entrepreneurs bear their own losses and so private sector firms are unwilling to undertake projects that could result in losses or would not develop a revenue stream.
Governments will invest in public works because of the overall benefit to society when there is a lack of private sector benefit or the risk is too great for a private company to accept on its own. According to research conducted at the Aalborg University, 86% of public works projects end up with cost overruns; some unexpected findings of the research were that: Technically difficult projects were not more to exceed the budget than less difficult projects Projects in which more people were directly and indirectly affected by the project turned out to be more susceptible to cost overruns Project managers did not learn from similar projects attempted in the pastGenerally contracts awarded by public tenders will include a provision for unexpected expenses, that amount to 10% of the value of the contract. This money is only spent during the course of the project if the construction managers judge that it is necessary, the expenditure must be justified in writing. Contingencies fund an economic discussion.
Madaket Ditch, one of the first public works projects in AmericaIndividual programs: Egyptian Public Works New Deal, USA, 1930s Opera Publica Public Works Administration, part of the New Deal in 1930s The dictionary definition of public works at Wiktionary American Public Works Association - Professional society
Ramón Castillo
Ramón Antonio Castillo Barrionuevo was a conservative Argentine politician who served as President of Argentina from June 27, 1942 to June 4, 1943. He was a leading figure in the period known as the Infamous Decade, characterised by electoral fraud and rule by conservative landowners heading the alliance known as the Concordancia. Castillo began a judicial career, he reached the Appeals Chamber of commercial law before dedicating himself to teaching. He was professor and dean at UBA between 1923 and 1928. Castillo was named Federal Intervenor of Tucumán Province in 1930. From 1932 until 1935 he was elected to the Argentine Senate for Catamarca Province for the National Democratic Party and was Minister of Interior. From 1938 to 1942, Castillo was vice-president of Argentina under President Roberto Ortiz, who won the election by fraud at the head of the Concordancia, he served as acting president from July 3, 1940 to June 27, 1942 due to the illness of President Ortiz, who did not resign until less than a month before his death.
Castillo maintained Argentina's neutrality during World War II. He was overthrown in the Revolution of'43 military coup in the midst of an unpopular attempt to impose Robustiano Patrón Costas as his successor. Juan Domingo Perón was a junior officer in the coup. Newspaper clippings about Ramón Castillo in the 20th Century Press Archives of the German National Library of Economics
Buenos Aires Province
Buenos Aires is the largest and most populous Argentinian province. It takes the name from the city of Buenos Aires, which used to be part of the province and the provincial capital until it was federalized in 1880. Since in spite of bearing the same name, the province does not include the national capital city proper, though it does include all other localities of the Greater Buenos Aires metropolitan area surrounding it; the current capital of the province is the city of La Plata, founded in 1882. The province is the only within the whole Argentina to be divided into partidos and furtherly into localidades, borders the provinces of Entre Ríos to the northeast. Uruguay is just near the Atlantic Ocean to the east; the entire province is part of the Pampas geographical region. The province has a population of 39 % of Argentina's total population. Nearly 10 million people live in Greater Buenos Aires; the area of the province, 307,571 km2, makes it the largest in Argentina with around 11% of the country's total area.
The inhabitants of the province before the 16th century advent of Spanish colonisation were aboriginal peoples such as the Charrúas and the Querandíes. Their culture was lost over the next 350 years, they were subjected to Eurasian plagues from. The survivors joined other tribes or have been absorbed by Argentina's European ethnic majority. Pedro de Mendoza founded Santa María del Buen Ayre in 1536. Though the first contact with the aboriginals was peaceful, it soon became hostile; the city was evacuated in 1541. Juan de Garay re-founded the settlement in 1580 as Santísima Trinidad y Puerto Santa María de los Buenos Aires. Amidst ongoing conflict with the aboriginals, the cattle farms extended from Buenos Aires, whose port was always the centre of the economy of the territory. Following the creation of the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata at the end of the 18th century, the export of meat and their derivatives through the port of Buenos Aires was the basis of the economic development of the region.
Jesuits unsuccessfully tried to peacefully assimilate the aboriginals into the European culture brought by the Spanish conquistadores. A certain balance was found at the end of the 18th century, when the Salado River became the limit between both civilizations, despite frequent malones; the end to this situation came in 1879 with the Conquest of the Desert in which the aboriginals were completely exterminated. After the independence from Spain in 1816, the city and province of Buenos Aires became the focus of an intermittent Argentine Civil War with other provinces. A Federal Pact secured by Governor Juan Manuel de Rosas in 1831 led to the establishment of the Argentine Confederation and to his gaining the sum of public power, which provided a tenuous unity. Ongoing disputes regarding the influence of Buenos Aires, between Federalists and Unitarians, over the Port of Buenos Aires fueled periodic hostilities; the province was declared independent on September 1852, as the State of Buenos Aires.
Concessions gained in the 1859 Pact of San José de Flores and a victory at the Battle of Pavón led to its reincorporation into the Argentine Republic on December 17, 1861. Intermittent conflicts with the nation did not cease until 1880, when the city of Buenos Aires was formally federalized and, administratively separated from the province. La Plata was founded in 1882 by Governor Dardo Rocha for the purpose of becoming the provincial capital; the equivalent of a billion dollars of British investment and pro-development and immigration policies pursued at the national level subsequently spurred dramatic economic growth. Driven by European immigration and improved health, the province's population, like Argentina's, nearly doubled to one million by 1895 and doubled again by 1914. Rail lines connected nearly every town and hamlet in the province by 1914; this era of accelerated development was cut short by the Wall Street Crash of 1929, which caused a sharp drop in commodity prices and led to a halt in the flow of investment funds between nations.
The new Concordance and Perón governments funded ambitious lending and public works programs, visible in Buenos Aires Province through the panoply of levees, power plants, water works, paved roads, municipal buildings, schools and massive regional hospitals. The province's population, after 1930, began to grow disproportionately in the suburban areas of Buenos Aires; these suburbs had grown to include 4 million out of the province's total 7 million people in 1960. Much of the area these new suburbs were developed on consisted of wetlands and were prone to flooding. To address this, Governor Oscar Alende initiated the province's most important flood-control project to date, the Roggero Reservoir. Completed a decade in 1971, the reservoir and associated electric and water-treatment facilities encouraged still more, more orderly, development of the Greater Buenos Aires region, which today includes around 10 million people, it did not address worsening pollution resulting from the area's industrial growth, which had made itself evident since aroun
Radical Civic Union
The Radical Civic Union is a centrist social-liberal political party in Argentina. The party has been ideologically heterogeneous; the UCR is a member of the Socialist International. Founded in 1891 by radical liberals, it is the oldest political party active in Argentina after the Liberal Party of Corrientes. For many years the party was either in opposition to Peronist governments or illegal during military rule; the UCR's main support comes from the middle class. Throughout its history the party has stood for free elections, supremacy of civilians over the military and liberal democratic values. During the 1970s and 1980s it was perceived as a strong advocate for human rights. By May 2014, the UCR had 14 Senators; the party was a breakaway from the Civic Union, led by Bartolomé Mitre and Leandro Alem. The term'radical' in the party's name referred to its demand for universal male suffrage, considered radical at the time, when Argentina was ruled by an exclusive oligarchy and government power was allocated behind closed doors.
The party unsuccessfully led an attempt to force the early departure of President Miguel Juárez Celman in the Revolution of the Park. A compromise was reached with Juárez Celman's government. Hardliners who opposed this agreement founded the current UCR, led by Alem's nephew, the young and charismatic Hipólito Yrigoyen. In 1893 and 1905 the party led unsuccessful revolutions to overthrow the government. With the introduction of free and confidential voting in elections based on universal adult male suffrage in 1912 the Party managed to win the general elections of 1916, when Hipólito Yrigoyen became president; as well as backing more popular participation, UCR's platform included promises to tackle the country's social problems and eradicate poverty. Yrigoyen's presidency however turned out to be rather dictatorial; the Radical Civic Union remained in power during the next 14 years: Yrigoyen was succeeded by Marcelo T. de Alvear in 1922 and again by himself in 1928. The first coup in Argentina's modern history occurred on September 6, 1930 and ousted an aging Yrigoyen amid an economic crisis resulting from the United States' Great Depression.
From 1930 to 1958 the Radical Civic Union was confined to be the main opposition party, either to the Conservatives and the military during the 1930s and the early 1940s or to the Peronists during the late 1940s and early 1950s. It was only in 1958 that a faction of the party allied with banned Peronists came back to power, led by Arturo Frondizi; the growing tolerance of Frondizi towards his Peronist allies provoked unrest in the army, which ousted the president in March 1962. After a brief military government, presidential elections took place in 1963 with the Peronist Party banned; the outcome saw the candidate of the People's Radical Civic Union Arturo Illia coming first but with only 25% of the votes. Although Argentina experienced during Illia's presidency one of the most successful periods of history in terms of economic performance, the president was ousted by the army in June 1966. Illia's peaceful and ordered style of governing — sometimes considered too "slow" and "boring" - was being criticized at the time.
During the 1970s Peronist government, the Radical Civic Union was the second-most supported party, but this didn't grant the party the role of being the political opposition. In fact, the Peronist government's most important criticisms came from the same Peronist Party; the UCR's leader in those times, Ricardo Balbín, saluted Peron's coffin with the famous sentence "This old adversary salutes a great friend", thus marking the end of the Peronist-radical rivalry that had marked the pace of the Argentine political scene until then. The growing fight between left-wing and right-wing Peronists took the country into chaos and many UCR members were targeted by both factions; the subsequent coup in 1976 ended Peronist rule. During the military regime many members of the UCR were "disappeared", as were members of other parties. Between 1983 and 1989 its leader, Raúl Ricardo Alfonsín, was the first democratically elected president after the military dictatorship headed by generals such as Jorge Videla, Leopoldo Galtieri and Reynaldo Bignone.
Alfonsín was succeeded by Carlos Saúl Menem of the Peronist Justicialist Party. In 1997 the UCR participated in elections in coalition with Front for a Country in Solidarity, itself an alliance of many smaller parties; this strategy brought Fernando de la Rúa to the presidency in the 1999 elections. During major riots triggered by economic reforms implemented by the UCR government, President de la Rúa resigned and fled the country to prevent further turmoil. After three consecutive acting presidents assumed and resigned their duties in the following weeks, Eduardo Duhalde of the PJ took office until new elections could be held. After the 2001 legislative elections it became the second-largest party in the federal Chamber of Deputies, winning 71 of 257 seats, it campaigned in an alliance with the smaller, more leftist FREPASO. The party has subsequently declined markedly and its candidate for President in 2003 gained just 2.34% of the vote, beaten by three Peronis
International Standard Book Number
The International Standard Book Number is a numeric commercial book identifier, intended to be unique. Publishers purchase ISBNs from an affiliate of the International ISBN Agency. An ISBN is assigned to each variation of a book. For example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN; the ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, 10 digits long if assigned before 2007. The method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country; the initial ISBN identification format was devised in 1967, based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO 2108. Published books sometimes appear without an ISBN; the International ISBN agency sometimes assigns such books ISBNs on its own initiative.
Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines and newspapers. The International Standard Music Number covers musical scores; the Standard Book Numbering code is a 9-digit commercial book identifier system created by Gordon Foster, Emeritus Professor of Statistics at Trinity College, for the booksellers and stationers WHSmith and others in 1965. The ISBN identification format was conceived in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the United States by Emery Koltay; the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO 2108. The United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. ISO has appointed the International ISBN Agency as the registration authority for ISBN worldwide and the ISBN Standard is developed under the control of ISO Technical Committee 46/Subcommittee 9 TC 46/SC 9; the ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978.
An SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit "0". For example, the second edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has "SBN 340 01381 8" – 340 indicating the publisher, 01381 their serial number, 8 being the check digit; this can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8. Since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format, compatible with "Bookland" European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each variation of a book. For example, an ebook, a paperback, a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN; the ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, 10 digits long if assigned before 2007. An International Standard Book Number consists of 4 parts or 5 parts: for a 13-digit ISBN, a prefix element – a GS1 prefix: so far 978 or 979 have been made available by GS1, the registration group element, the registrant element, the publication element, a checksum character or check digit. A 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces.
Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is done with either hyphens or spaces. Figuring out how to separate a given ISBN is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN is most used among others special identifiers to describe references in Wikipedia and can help to find the same sources with different description in various language versions. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency, responsible for that country or territory regardless of the publication language; the ranges of ISBNs assigned to any particular country are based on the publishing profile of the country concerned, so the ranges will vary depending on the number of books and the number and size of publishers that are active. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture and thus may receive direct funding from government to support their services. In other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded.
A full directory of ISBN agencies is available on the International ISBN Agency website. Partial listing: Australia: the commercial library services agency Thorpe-Bowker.
Railroad engineer
An engineer, engine driver, loco pilot, train driver, is a person who operates a train. The driver is in charge of, responsible for driving the engine, as well as the mechanical operation of the train, train speed, all train handling. For many American railroads, the following career progression is typical: assistant conductor and driver. In the US, drivers are required to be re-certified every two to three years. In American English a hostler moves engines around train yards, but does not take them out on the normal tracks. In India, a driver starts as electrical assistant, they get promoted on a scale: goods, Mail/Express and Rajdhani/Shatabdi/Duronto. In the United States and Canada, train drivers are known as "locomotive engineers", or "handlers". In the United Kingdom, South Africa, New Zealand, Australia they are known as "train drivers", "engine drivers", "locomotive drivers", or "locomotive operators". Ben Chifley, former Prime Minister of Australia Christine Gonzalez, first woman engineer at a Class 1 railroad.
Casey Jones, American engineer whose wreck on the Illinois Central Railroad on April 30, 1900 was immortalized in verse and music. The United Kingdom based transport historian Christian Wolmar stated in October 2013 that train operators employed by the Rio Tinto Group to transport iron ore across the Australian outback were to be the highest-paid members of the occupation in the world at that time. Fireman Motorman Stormy Kromer cap Huibregtse, Jon R.. American Railroad Labor and the Genesis of the New Deal, 1919-1935. University Press of Florida. Licht, Walter. Working for the Railroad: The Organization of Work in the Nineteenth Century. Orr, John W.. Set Up Running: The Life of a Pennsylvania Railroad Engineman, 1904-1949. Tuck, Joseph Hugh. Canadian Railways and the International Brotherhoods: Labour Organizations in the Railway Running Trades in Canada, 1865-1914. 37. Dissertation Abstracts International. P. 6681. The following examine the role of the railroad engineer from 1890 to 1919, discussing qualifications for becoming an engineer and typical experiences on the job: White, John H. Jr..
"Oh, To Be a Locomotive Engineer, Part 1: Once It Was Every Boy's Ambition". Railroad History. 189: 12–33. JSTOR 43504848. White, John H. Jr.. "Oh, To Be a Locomotive Engineer, Part 2: More About the Lives of Eagle-Eyes Famous and Forgotten". Railroad History. 190: 56–77. JSTOR 43524273. Media related to Locomotive drivers at Wikimedia Commons A detailed explanation of what train driving involves, becoming a train driver in the UK Run-A-Locomotive. Link to a site that offers an engineer experience program at a museum in California. Train Conductor Job Information How to become a train driver guide The Center Of A Future Train Conductor
Chalet
A chalet called Swiss chalet, is a type of building or house, typical of the Alpine region in Europe. It is made of wood, with a heavy sloping roof and wide, well-supported eaves set at right angles to the front of the house; the term chalet stems from Arpitan speaking part of Switzerland and French Savoy and referred to the hut of a herder. Many chalets in the European Alps were used as seasonal farms for dairy cattle which would be brought up from the lowland pastures during the summer months; the herders would live in the chalet and make butter and cheese in order to preserve the milk produced. These products would be taken, with the cattle, back to the low valleys before the onset of the alpine winter; the chalets would remain unused during the winter months. Around many chalets there are small windowless huts called mazots which were used to lock away valuable items for this period. With the emergence of the Alpine travel business, chalets were transformed into holiday homes used by ski and hiking enthusiasts.
Over the years, the term'chalet' changed to be applied to holiday homes, whether built in a Alpine style or not. In Quebec French, any summer or holiday dwelling near a ski hill, is called a chalet whether or not it is built in the style of a Swiss chalet. Nowadays, in North America and elsewhere in the world, the use of the word chalet can refer to more than just a mountain location; the term chalet is used to describe resort-like homes or residential properties located by the beach. For example, in Lebanon a chalet refers to holiday homes at one of the six Lebanese ski resorts, but the term can refer to a beach cabin at seaside resorts. In North American ski areas, the word chalet is used to describe buildings that house cafeterias and other services provided to the tourist though they may not resemble a traditional Alpine chalet. In the United States, alpine Ski Chalets are gaining popularity in Colorado and the Rocky Mountain region during winter months. Most Ski Chalets are owned vacation homes that owners visit two to three times per year and rent out the remaining time.
Owners of these Ski Chalets hire Property Management companies to manage and rent their property. In the Levant and Kuwait, chalets refer to beach houses, rather than mountainside homes, built in any style of architecture. In Britain, the word chalet was used for basic sleeping accommodation at holiday camps built around the mid-20th century. Villa Cottage Bungalow American Craftsman Mar del Plata style Vernacular architecture Dana, William Sumner Barton, The Swiss Chalet Book.
