Monastery
A monastery is a building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in communities or alone. A monastery includes a place reserved for prayer which may be a chapel, church, or temple, may serve as an oratory. Monasteries vary in size, comprising a small dwelling accommodating only a hermit, or in the case of communities anything from a single building housing only one senior and two or three junior monks or nuns, to vast complexes and estates housing tens or hundreds. A monastery complex comprises a number of buildings which include a church, cloister, library and infirmary. Depending on the location, the monastic order and the occupation of its inhabitants, the complex may include a wide range of buildings that facilitate self-sufficiency and service to the community; these may include a hospice, a school, a range of agricultural and manufacturing buildings such as a barn, a forge, or a brewery. In English usage, the term monastery is used to denote the buildings of a community of monks.
In modern usage, convent tends to be applied only to institutions of female monastics communities of teaching or nursing religious sisters. A convent denoted a house of friars, now more called a friary. Various religions may apply these terms in more specific ways; the word monastery comes from the Greek word μοναστήριον, neut. of μοναστήριος – monasterios from μονάζειν – monazein "to live alone" from the root μόνος – monos "alone". The earliest extant use of the term monastērion is by the 1st century AD Jewish philosopher Philo in On The Contemplative Life, ch. III. In England the word monastery was applied to the habitation of a bishop and the cathedral clergy who lived apart from the lay community. Most cathedrals were not monasteries, were served by canons secular, which were communal but not monastic. However, some were run by monasteries orders, such as York Minster. Westminster Abbey was for a short time a cathedral, was a Benedictine monastery until the Reformation, its Chapter preserves elements of the Benedictine tradition.
See the entry cathedral. They are to be distinguished from collegiate churches, such as St George's Chapel, Windsor. In most of this article, the term monastery is used generically to refer to any of a number of types of religious community. In the Roman Catholic religion and to some extent in certain branches of Buddhism, there is a somewhat more specific definition of the term and many related terms. Buddhist monasteries are called vihara. Viharas may be occupied by men or women, in keeping with common English usage, a vihara populated by females may be called a nunnery or a convent. However, vihara can refer to a temple. In Tibetan Buddhism, monasteries are called gompa. In Thailand and Cambodia, a monastery is called a wat. In Burma, a monastery is called a kyaung. A Christian monastery may be a priory, or conceivably a hermitage, it may be a community of men or of women. A charterhouse is any monastery belonging to the Carthusian order. In Eastern Christianity, a small monastic community can be called a skete, a large or important monastery can be given the dignity of a lavra.
The great communal life of a Christian monastery is called cenobitic, as opposed to the anchoretic life of an anchorite and the eremitic life of a hermit. There has been under the Osmanli occupation of Greece and Cyprus, an "idiorrhythmic" lifestyle where monks come together but being able to own things individually and not being obliged to work for the common good. In Hinduism monasteries are called matha, koil, or most an ashram. Jains use the Buddhist term vihara. In most religions the life inside monasteries is governed by community rules that stipulate the gender of the inhabitants and require them to remain celibate and own little or no personal property; the degree to which life inside a particular monastery is separate from the surrounding populace can vary widely. Others focus on interacting with the local communities to provide services, such as teaching, medical care, or evangelism; some monastic communities are only occupied seasonally, depending both on the traditions involved and the local weather, people may be part of a monastic community for periods ranging from a few days at a time to an entire lifetime.
The life within the walls of a monastery may be supported in several ways: by manufacturing and selling goods agricultural products, by donations or alms, by rental or investment incomes, by funds from other organizations within the religion, which in the past formed the traditional support of monasteries. There has been a long tradition of Christian monasteries providing hospitable and hospital services. Monasteries have been associated with the provision of education and the encouragement of scholarship and research, which has led to the establishment of schools and colleges and the association with universities. Christian monastic life has adapted to modern society by offering computer services, accounting services and management as well as modern hospital and educational administration. Buddhist monasteries, known as vihāra i
Self-checkout
Self-checkout machines provide a mechanism for customers to process their own purchases from a retailer. They are an alternative to the traditional cashier-staffed checkout; the customer performs the job of the cashier themselves, by scanning and applying payment for the items. As of 2013, there were 191,000 self-checkout units worldwide, the number was estimated to reach 325,000 units by 2019; the machines were invented by David R. Humble. In self-checkout systems, the customer is required to: scan the barcodes; the weight observed in the bagging area is verified against stored information to ensure that the correct item is bagged, allowing the customer to proceed only if the observed and expected weights match. Payment by various methods may be accepted by the machines: card via EFTPOS, debit/credit cards, electronic food assistance cards, cash via coin slot and bank note scanner, in-store gift cards where applicable. Most coupons have barcodes and can be scanned the same way that items are scanned, although some require entry by a member of staff.
The benefit to the retailer in providing self-checkout machines is in reduced labour costs: one attendant can run four to six checkout lanes with the work of the cashier now being assumed by the customer. The size of a self-checkout machine is smaller than a traditional checkout manned by a cashier. Customers who do not want to interact with the cashier can use the self-checkout. Self-checkout can sometimes be faster than using a cashier lane; this can wait times. In a survey by NCR, 42% of customers said they liked the convenience of self-checkout, while 39% said it was faster than the cashier-assisted line. 90% of those surveyed responded as being users of self-checkout, with 7% of respondents saying they will always use self-checkout regardless of store lines and number of items. Survey respondents in Italy and Australia said they "always use self-checkout" at a rate of 13% and 9% respectively. One advantage is that self-checkouts can, if the necessary investment is made, provide a multilingual service.
For example, Tesco's Welsh stores which can serve customers in Welsh, whereas finding enough fluent Welsh-speakers as staff can be difficult because in some areas only a small proportion of local people have Welsh as their first language. Self-checkout is vulnerable to some shoplifting techniques. In some cases the machine will pick up the attempt to steal, or cause the shopper to alter their behavior. For example, in 2007, a man was charged with replacing the tag of a plasma TV with a $4.88 DVD, trying to purchase it through self-checkout. Studies suggest that a large proportion of shoppers are tempted to shoplift due to the relative ease of fooling self-checkouts. For example, a person who does not scan an item, may remember that this was easy, fail to scan other items deliberately. A 2012 survey with 4,952 respondents in the UK found that a third of shoppers had stolen this way, with around a quarter of the remainder stating they were deterred by the risk of detection. Non-barcode items such as produce, store staff overriding checkout alerts, were singled out as vulnerabilities, poverty was not seen as a major factor.
The founder of one store video surveillance system estimated that "Theft — intentional or not — is up to five times higher with self checkout than when cashiers are working", although behaviour of shoplifters is becoming well known, stores are now better at shoplifting detection. A 2014 survey in of 2,634 respondents confirmed the same general findings, but commented that the cost of additional theft was evidently seen as "tolerable" compared to the cost of other processes, such as manned checkouts, harm due to poorer customer service arising from the slowness of manned versus automated checkouts. In 2002, a study was carried out where people with disabilities used self-checkout machines, found that existing checkout machines were not designed for accessibility. Self-checkouts are criticized for reducing the possibilities for customers and store staff to interact, adversely affecting customer service in general. Self-checkout lanes may lack some rather basic customer interactions, like informing the customer that a coupon was not accepted, why.
Being more complex, self-checkouts are more prone to failure. For example, they use scales to weigh goods in the bagging area, if the scale fails, the machine does not work. In a manned checkout lane, any simple problems like lack of receipt paper would be fixed by the operator, while self-checkouts may not be fixed for quite some time; this lack of reliability can be compensated for by having excess lanes available or enough staff on hand to perform immediate maintenance. An alternative system consists of a portable barcode scanner, used by the customer to scan and bag items while shopping; when the customer has finished shopping, the scanner is brought to a checkout kiosk, where the information from the barcode scanner is downloaded to the kiosk in conjunction with a
Classroom
A classroom is a learning space, a room in which both children and adults learn. Classrooms are found in educational institutions of all kinds, from preschools to universities, may be found in other places where education or training is provided, such as corporations and religious and humanitarian organizations; the classroom provides a space. In elementary schools, classrooms can have a whole group of 18 to 26 students and one or two teachers; when there are two teachers in a classroom, one is the lead teacher and the other one is the associate. Or the second teacher may be a special education teacher. In lower elementary the classrooms are set up different than upper elementary. In these classrooms there are tables instead of desks, a rug with a smart board for whole group learning, a library and centers; the rug is the vocal point of the classroom and everything else is strategically placed around it. The teacher must be able to move swiftly through the classroom. To determine if the classroom is meeting the highest level of quality there is a grading scale called ECERS.
There are 43 items on this checklist and it is diveded into 7 categories and they are as followes: Space and Furnishings, Personal Care Routines, Language-Reasoning, Interactions, Program Structure, Parents and Staff. In an upper elementary classroom students now use desks, there is no rug for whole group learning but there is a smart board and computers. Students start practicing switching classes to get accustomed to middle and high school transitions. In a self-contained classrooms there are 7 or less students. Self-contained classrooms are designed for children. Teachers get to focus on their small group of students and create individualized lessons for each child. An integrated or inclusion classroom can be thought of as a mix between a traditional classroom and a self-contained classroom. In this style of classroom, there is a mix of general students that need services. There are two teachers in this style of classroom, a general education teacher and special education teacher, they both teach and serve the students in the classroom, but during certain parts of the day the special education teacher may pull the students that have services to give them additional support.
This allows students with accommodations or an Individual Education Program, to still get to be in a general classroom but get the individualized instruction they need. Middle school and high school classrooms are set up quite similar. There is one teacher and students transition from one classroom to the next, they do not stay in one classroom all day. These classrooms can have around 20 students. Students may not have the same group of students in each class depending on the students schedule. College classrooms are set up in a lecture hall or auditorium with one teacher called a professor; this teacher has a Teacher Assistant, a grad student. This person may help grade tests, they can hold review sessions for college students to come to once or twice a week. Some other types of classrooms that a middle/high school or college might have are: computer labs for IT lessons, gymnasiums for sports, science laboratories for biology and physics; the layout and decor of the classroom has a significant effect upon the quality of the educational experience.
Attention to the acoustics and colour scheme may reduce distractions and aid concentration. The lighting and furniture influence factors such as student attention span. Few pupil-centric design principles were used in the construction of classrooms. In 19th century Britain, one of the few common considerations was to try and orient new buildings so the class windows faced north as much as possible, while avoiding west or southern facing windows, as in Britain northern light causes less glare. Desks were arranged in columns and rows, with a teacher’s desk at the front, where he or she would stand and lecture the class. Little color was used for fear of distracting the children. In the 1950s and 60s cheap and harsh fluorescent lights were sometimes used, which could cause eyestrain. Research has suggested that optimal use of daylight, color selection and the arrangement of the furniture in the classroom can affect pupils academic success. Georgetown University found that test scores increased by 11% through the improvement of a classroom's physical environment.
In the design of a classroom, desk arrangements are essential to the decor and design of the classroom followed by seating arrangements for the students. Classroom desks are arranged in rows or columns, but there are many more ways to arrange the desks, for example making a circle with the desks so that it's more of a group discussion or having the desks in a "U" shape for group discussions and easy access for the teacher. Color is a big asset to the classroom by realating the colors to the subjects learned in the classroom to help the students learn. Color helps the atmosphere be fun and exciting and help visual stimulation for the students; the acoustics of the classroom are often overlooked, but are an important part of the success of a child. Choosing only materials that cause sound to reverberate, such as tile floors and hard wall surfaces increases noise levels and can prove detrimental to learning. One study of hyperactive versus control groups of children found that white noise has no impact on either group, but that auditory stimulation such as distant conversations or music has a negative effect on both groups
Auditorium
An auditorium is a room built to enable an audience to hear and watch performances at venues such as theatres. For movie theatres, the number of auditoriums is expressed as the number of screens. Auditoria can be found in entertainment venues, community halls, theaters, may be used for rehearsal, performing arts productions, or as a learning space; the term is taken from Latin. The audience in a modern theatre are separated from the performers by the proscenium arch, although other types of stage are common; the price charged for seats in each part of the auditorium varies according to the quality of the view of the stage. The seating areas can include some or all of the following: Stalls, orchestra or arena: the lower flat area below or at the same level as the stage. Balconies or galleries: one or more raised seating platforms towards the rear of the auditorium. In larger theatres, multiple levels are stacked vertically behind the stalls; the first level is called the dress circle or grand circle.
The highest platform, or upper circle is sometimes known as the gods in large opera houses, where the seats can be high and a long distance from the stage. Boxes: placed to the front and above the level of the stage, they are separate rooms with an open viewing area which seat only a handful of people. These seats are considered the most prestigious of the house. A state box or royal box is sometimes provided for dignitaries. Seating arrangement: Seating arrangements in an auditorium seating layout will either be identified as “multiple-aisle” or “continental.” These terms are found in design standards manuals, building codes, similar architectural reference documents. Each size is unique, with specific guidelines governing row size, row spacing, exit ways. A multiple-aisle arrangement will have a maximum of 14–16 chairs per row with access to an aisle-way at both ends. In a continental arrangement, all seats are located in a central section. Here the maximum quantity of chairs per row can exceed the limits established in a multiple-aisle arrangement.
In order to compensate for the greater length of rows allowed, building codes will require wider row spacing, wider aisles, strategically located exit doors. Although it would seem like more space is called for, a continental seating plan is not any less efficient than a multiple-aisle arrangement. In fact, if it is planned, a continental arrangement can accommodate more seating within the same space. Sports venues such as stadiums and racetracks have royal boxes or enclosures, for example at the All England Club and Ascot Racecourse, where access is limited to royal families or other distinguished personalities. In other countries, sports venues have luxury boxes, where access is open to anyone who can afford tickets. Auditorium Building List of concert halls Music venue Noise mitigation Performing arts center Smoking ban Concert hall acoustics on-line exhibition
Basement
A basement or cellar is one or more floors of a building that are either or below the ground floor. They are used as a utility space for a building where such items as the boiler, water heater, breaker panel or fuse box, car park, air-conditioning system are located. However, in cities with high property prices such as London, basements are fitted out to a high standard and used as living space. In British English, the word basement is used for underground floors of, for example, department stores, but the word is only used with houses when the space below their ground floor is habitable, with windows and its own access; the word cellar or cellars is used to apply to the whole underground level or to any large underground room. A subcellar is a cellar. A basement can be used in exactly the same manner as an additional above-ground floor of a house or other building. However, the use of basements depends on factors specific to a particular geographical area such as climate, seismic activity, building technology, real estate economics.
Basements in small buildings such as single-family detached houses are rare in wet climates such as Great Britain and Ireland where flooding can be a problem, though they may be used on larger structures. However, basements are considered standard on all but the smallest new buildings in many places with temperate continental climates such as the American Midwest and the Canadian Prairies where a concrete foundation below the frost line is needed in any case, to prevent a building from shifting during the freeze-thaw cycle. Basements are much easier to construct in areas with soft soils and may be foregone in places where the soil is too compact for easy excavation, their use may be restricted in earthquake zones, because of the possibility of the upper floors collapsing into the basement. Adding a basement can reduce heating and cooling costs as it is a form of earth sheltering, a way to reduce a building's surface area-to-volume ratio; the housing density of an area may influence whether or not a basement is considered necessary.
Basements have become much easier to build since the industrialization of home building. Large powered excavation machines such as backhoes and front-end loaders have reduced the time and manpower needed to dig a basement as compared to digging by hand with a spade, although this method may still be used in the developing world. For most of its early history, the basement took one of two forms, it could be little more than a cellar, or it could be a section of a building containing rooms and spaces similar to those of the rest of the structure, as in the case of basement flats and basement offices. However, beginning with the development of large, mid-priced suburban homes in the 1950s, the basement, as a space in its own right took hold, it was a large, concrete-floored space, accessed by indoor stairs, with exposed columns and beams along the walls and ceilings, or sometimes, walls of poured concrete or concrete cinder block. A daylight basement is contained in a house where at least part of the floor goes above ground to provide reasonably-sized windows.
The floor's ceiling should be enough above ground to provide nearly full-size windows. Some daylight basements are located on slopes, such that one portion of the floor is at-grade with the land. A walk-out basement always results from this. Most daylight basements result from raised bungalows and at-grade walk-out basements. However, there are instances where the terrain dips enough from one side to another to allow for 3/4 to full-size windows, with the actual floor remaining below grade. In most parts of North America, it is legal to set up apartments and legal bedrooms in daylight basements, whether or not the entire basement is above grade. Daylight basements can be used for several purposes—as a garage, as maintenance rooms, or as living space; the buried portion is used for storage, laundry room, hot water tanks, HVAC. Daylight basement homes appraise higher than standard-basement homes, since they include more viable living spaces. In some parts of the US, the appraisal for daylight basement space is half that of ground and above ground level square footage.
Designs accommodated include split-level homes. Garages on both levels are sometimes possible; as with any multilevel home, there are savings on roofing and foundations. A walk-out basement is any basement, underground but nonetheless allows egress directly outdoors and has floating walls; this can either be through a stairwell leading above ground, or a door directly outside if a portion of the basement is at or above grade. Many walk-out basements are daylight basements; the only exceptions are when the entire basement is nearly underground, a stair well leads up nearly a floors worth of vertical height to lead to the outdoors. Basements with only an emergency exit well do not count as walk-out. Walk-out basements with at-grade doors on one side are worth a lot more, but are more costly to construct since the foundation is still constructed to reach below the frost line. At-grade walk-out basements are on the door-side used as livable space for the house, with the buried portion used for utilities and storage.
A subbasement is a floor below the basement floor. In the homes where there is any type of basement mentioned above, such as a look-out basement, all
Autumn
Autumn known as fall in American English and sometimes in Canadian English, is one of the four temperate seasons. Autumn marks the transition from summer to winter, in September or March, when the duration of daylight becomes noticeably shorter and the temperature cools considerably. One of its main features in temperate climates is the shedding of leaves from deciduous trees; some cultures regard the autumnal equinox as "mid-autumn", while others with a longer temperature lag treat it as the start of autumn. Meteorologists use a definition based on Gregorian calendar months, with autumn being September and November in the northern hemisphere, March and May in the southern hemisphere. In North America, autumn traditionally starts on September 21 and ends on December 21, it is considered to end with the winter solstice. Popular culture in the United States associates Labor Day, the first Monday in September, as the end of summer and the start of autumn; as daytime and nighttime temperatures decrease, trees shed their leaves.
In traditional East Asian solar term, autumn starts on or around 8 August and ends on or about 7 November. In Ireland, the autumn months according to the national meteorological service, Met Éireann, are September and November. However, according to the Irish Calendar, based on ancient Gaelic traditions, autumn lasts throughout the months of August and October, or a few days depending on tradition; the names of the months in Manx Gaelic are based on autumn covering August and October. In Argentina and New Zealand, autumn begins on 1 March and ends on 31 May; the word autumn comes from the ancient Etruscan root autu- and has within it connotations of the passing of the year. It was borrowed by the neighbouring Romans, became the Latin word autumnus. After the Roman era, the word continued to be used as the Old French word autompne or autumpne in Middle English, was normalised to the original Latin. In the Medieval period, there are rare examples of its use as early as the 12th century, but by the 16th century, it was in common use.
Before the 16th century, harvest was the term used to refer to the season, as it is common in other West Germanic languages to this day. However, as more people moved from working the land to living in towns, the word harvest lost its reference to the time of year and came to refer only to the actual activity of reaping, autumn, as well as fall, began to replace it as a reference to the season; the alternative word fall for the season traces its origins to old Germanic languages. The exact derivation is unclear, with the Old English fiæll or feallan and the Old Norse fall all being possible candidates. However, these words all have the meaning "to fall from a height" and are derived either from a common root or from each other; the term came to denote the season in 16th-century England, a contraction of Middle English expressions like "fall of the leaf" and "fall of the year". During the 17th century, English emigration to the British colonies in North America was at its peak, the new settlers took the English language with them.
While the term fall became obsolete in Britain, it became the more common term in North America. The name backend, a once common name for the season in Northern England, has today been replaced by the name autumn. Association with the transition from warm to cold weather, its related status as the season of the primary harvest, has dominated its themes and popular images. In Western cultures, personifications of autumn are pretty, well-fed females adorned with fruits and grains that ripen at this time. Many cultures feature autumnal harvest festivals the most important on their calendars. Still extant echoes of these celebrations are found in the autumn Thanksgiving holiday of the United States and Canada, the Jewish Sukkot holiday with its roots as a full-moon harvest festival of "tabernacles". There are the many North American Indian festivals tied to harvest of ripe foods gathered in the wild, the Chinese Mid-Autumn or Moon festival, many others; the predominant mood of these autumnal celebrations is a gladness for the fruits of the earth mixed with a certain melancholy linked to the imminent arrival of harsh weather.
This view is presented in English poet John Keats' poem To Autumn, where he describes the season as a time of bounteous fecundity, a time of'mellow fruitfulness'. In North America, while most foods are harvested during the autumn, foods associated with the season include pumpkins and apples, which are used to make the seasonal beverage apple cider. Autumn in poetry, has been associated with melancholia; the possibilities and opportunities of summer are gone, the chill of winter is on the horizon. Skies turn grey, the amount of usable daylight drops and many people turn inward, both physically and mentally, it has been referred to as an unhealthy season. Similar examples may be found in Irish poet William Butler Yeats' poem The Wild Swans at Coole where the maturing season that the poet observes symbolically represents his own ageing self. Like the natural world that he observes, he too has reached his prime and now must look forward to the inevitability of old age and death. French p
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