Nightingale https://nightingale.becomingcelia.com I sang during the night in early June Mon, 15 Mar 2021 01:14:56 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.8.12 Analyse Mother to Son by Langston Hughes https://nightingale.becomingcelia.com/2021/03/analyse-mother-to-son-by-langston-hughes.html https://nightingale.becomingcelia.com/2021/03/analyse-mother-to-son-by-langston-hughes.html#respond Sun, 14 Mar 2021 13:18:28 +0000 https://nightingale.becomingcelia.com/?p=1079 Mother to Son is a song written by Langston Hughes in 1922 during the Harlem Renaissance, the most significant art movement in black literature in the US, when African Americans and intellectuals related to black culture evolved, highlighting the ups and downs of African Americans and combat against racism in their literature. During this great […]

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Mother to Son is a song written by Langston Hughes in 1922 during the Harlem Renaissance, the most significant art movement in black literature in the US, when African Americans and intellectuals related to black culture evolved, highlighting the ups and downs of African Americans and combat against racism in their literature.

During this great culture revolution era, African Americans finally got the chance to thrive, among which is the song, Mother to son, comprised of the monologue of an African American mother whose life was surrounded by misery encouraged her son to follow her, be optimistic and overcome all the hardships and surmount all the obstacles in life. The three main themes in the song are hardships, courage, and the role of a mother, and these are highlighted by Hughes through the song’s form and literary devices.

In the poem, Hughes highlights the inevitable hardship dealt in any individual’s life. The idea is shown by the use of symbolism and anaphora. The speaker mentioned the “crystal stair” at both the outset and the end of the song.

The crystal stairs symbolize the comforting life style, which the mother does not possess. This very idea is repeated in the close line when the speaker says
”and life for me ain’t been no crystal stairs”. using the same symbols at the beginning and closing lines, the speaker depicts a vivid image that African Americans are far away from obtaining the American life style no matter how hard they try, the beginning circles back to the ending. The technique of anaphora is used when the speaker repeats: “And splinters, / And boards torn up, / And places with no carpet on the floor—” The word “and” is repeatedly used at the start of each line, highlighting the adversities and various challenges in the life of the mother, each “and” introduces a new impediment, highlighting the never-ending sufferings in the mother’s life journey, as well as the hundreds of thousands of African American.

Image by Quotefancy

The song is written in free verse, without a particular rhyme scheme, stanza pattern or rules in the length of its lines. This could be a possible implication of the theme of courage. When one is courageous, with its perseverance, one could persistently break through all the difficulties hindering, restricting it from moving forward. Under the background of the song, the difficulties here could be implying poor living conditions, the “tacks”, the “splinters”, the “boards torn up”, the “places with no carpet on the floor”, but on a higher level, referring to racism, discrimination and inequality that are faced by African Americans in the early twentieth century. The theme of courage suggested by the free style of the song could be the fight against the dark elements and dangerous situations. It is the determination that the less privileged classes need in order to survive and achieve their goals.

Moreover, the poem presents the mother as a role model for the child. The mother and her son seem to be strongly bonded. The mother uses her life experiences to point the correct directions for her son and intends to prepare her son mentally ready for life, leading her son to a better future and to become a better individual.

As a conclusion, through a monologue of a representative African American mother in the song, the speaker has effectively reflects the situation of African Americans and their difficult fight against discrimination and racism. It plays a key role in the artistic movement in Harlem during the 1920s.

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Focus App for Mac: How to stop Focus during Emergency https://nightingale.becomingcelia.com/2020/12/focus-app-for-mac-how-to-stop-during-emergency.html https://nightingale.becomingcelia.com/2020/12/focus-app-for-mac-how-to-stop-during-emergency.html#respond Tue, 29 Dec 2020 06:03:25 +0000 https://nightingale.becomingcelia.com/?p=1053 Right now it is the last break before our IGCSE Exams takes place. It is crucial to keep myself focused and motivated when learning at this time, therefore I purchased myself “Focus”, an amazing app that keeps me away from apps or websites that might distract me on my mac. Just like what it mentions […]

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Right now it is the last break before our IGCSE Exams takes place. It is crucial to keep myself focused and motivated when learning at this time, therefore I purchased myself “Focus”, an amazing app that keeps me away from apps or websites that might distract me on my mac.

Just like what it mentions in its official website and its documentation, the app exactly does its job. Whenever I tried to access any distractive app it is quitted right away and when I intended to open any distractive website, Focus reminds me to keep on track by redirecting me to this page:

Website blocked by Focus

I set the Focus app to run 24 hours a day and start again automatically at the start of every day, blocking all the social media apps and all the websites. I also gave myself 60 minutes of break time in total every day. But here is the problem. There are always situations that cannot be predicted. There is this day when I have spent most of my break time on research for a HW and when I realized that I have no more break time to turn in my HW, I panicked, so I was on the way exploring ways to “escape from Focus”. If you, like me, has set yourself long period of “Focus time” and couldn’t access essential functions when you actually need them, this article is for you.

Approaches

There are three main approaches when it comes to escaping from Focus:

  1. Bypass / avoid using the default system to browse websites
  2. Trick the Focus app
  3. Stop the Focus app completely

Bypassing the Default System

There are two ways I thought about that can achieve the purpose. The first way, use a virtual machine.

Using a Virtual Machine

Chrome for Windows can access websites blocked by Focus

As shown above, while websites cannot be opened through Chrome for MacOS, it can still be accessed through Chrome installed on the Windows 10 running on Parallels.

Besides Parallels, there are also many more affordable alternatives such as VMWare Fusion, Apple Boot Camp (not recommended as it cannot run with the MacOS system at the same time, which is quite inconvenient) VirtualBox (free for personal or education version) Wine and CrossOver (these turn Windows software into Mac apps, the quality of the apps are not guaranteed. e.g. There could be problems such as having confusing codes in apps with Chinese).

Creating a new Mac account

Since Focus is only applied to the current user using the Mac, it does not work on other users or groups. It is also simple to switch between accounts, any file that you want to move from one account to another can be placed in the Application folder as it is shared among all the users.

Users and Groups in System Preferences

Click the “+” sign at bottom left to add a user, and click the “-” anytime when you want to remove the user.

Trick Focus

Now this is our second approach. This method helps us to open those apps blocked by Focus. When we were setting which app cannot be opened by the user in preferences of the Focus app, we give the app the address of the app it is going block, for instance, “/Applications/weChat.app”. This means that if we change the address of the app, it will not be able to find the app anymore and therefore the app is unblocked.

There are two main ways to do so. One, copy your app to somewhere else, away from the Applications folder. In this way its address is changed and you can double click to open the app. The second way is much more easier, that is, to change the name of the app, for instance, from weChat to WeiXin. The address of the app will therefore change from “/Applications/weChat.app” to “/Applications/WeiXin.app”. Therefore, the app will not be recognized by the Focus app and can then be opened.

Stop Focus completely

This might not be a great choice for many, since this goes against the purpose of Focus and doesn’t really suit the situation given at the start of the Article, but since it works I will include it here.

The way Focus counts down the Focus time remaining, is through comparing the System time with the time you started focusing. By changing the system time, we can trick Focus into thinking that we are already at the time when the Focus time is passed. Focus will automatically stops counting down and be “unfocused”.

First, go to System Preferences, click on “Date & Time” at the bottom.

System Preferences

Click on the lock at the bottom left to make changes, then uncheck the box that says “Set date and time automatically”. At the calendar below change the time to anything that is after the Focus period. At the same time, the Focus app will stop focusing on its own. Then switch the system time back if you wish by checking the box again.

Thanks for reading and hope this helps. The above methods is only for emergency situations when you cannot access essential functions when you actually need them, and not for getting off track. Always remember that Focus is an app to stop you from getting distracted and use it in the best way to help yourself.

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POTW – What are the Possibilities? https://nightingale.becomingcelia.com/2020/11/potw-what-are-the-possibilities.html https://nightingale.becomingcelia.com/2020/11/potw-what-are-the-possibilities.html#comments Tue, 10 Nov 2020 10:14:27 +0000 https://nightingale.becomingcelia.com/?p=1040 This is a problem originally published on Problem of the Week of University of Waterloo. The question was about finding the roots of a functions. I thought it would be really easy since Desmos seems to be able to solve all functions, however in this interesting question it fails, which is why I am posting […]

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This is a problem originally published on Problem of the Week of University of Waterloo. The question was about finding the roots of a functions. I thought it would be really easy since Desmos seems to be able to solve all functions, however in this interesting question it fails, which is why I am posting it here.

Original Question

You may be surprised to learn that the equation $(x^2-5x+5)^{x^2+4x-60}=1$ has five solutions.

Determine all five values of $x$ that satisfy the equation.

Attempts

At first I was trying to solve this as a polynomial, moving “1” from the RHS to the LHS, but then I did not know what to do. This is way more complicated to solve and I did not even know where to start.

Failing to solve this on my own, I put the whole function into Desmos, and this is what it gives me:

Ok here I can see four roots, but where is the fifth? Is it a real number even? And also what is this?

If you know it is not fully resolved why don’t you fully resolve it?

Eventually I asked my tutor about this and when he pointed me the way out I realised that I was being really dumb.

So in this functions there are three cases that will results in the RHS being 1.

Case #1

index ​$=x^2+4x-60=0$
$(x+10)(x-6)=0$
$​x=6$ or $x=-10$

Case #2

base = $x^2-5x+5=1$
$x^2-5x+4=0$
$(x−4)(x−1)=0$
$x=1$ or $x=4$

Case #3

This is the root that is not showing in Desmos.

base = -1, index = even
So $x^2+4x-60$ must be a even number
base = -1, $x^2-5x+5=-1$
$x^2-5x+6=0$
$(x−2)(x−3)=0$
$x=2$ or $x=3$
when $x=2$, index = $2^2+4*2-60=4+8-60=-48$
when $x=3$, index = $3^2+4*3-60=9+12-60=-39$ ≠ even
$x=2$

Answer

So the final 5 roots?
$x=-10, 1, 2, 4, 6$

Hope you find this interesting!

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U2 – Supplements https://nightingale.becomingcelia.com/2020/10/u2-supplements.html https://nightingale.becomingcelia.com/2020/10/u2-supplements.html#respond Fri, 16 Oct 2020 02:12:42 +0000 https://nightingale.becomingcelia.com/?p=946 This post contains some additional notes for IB Physics Unit 2 Mechanics, especially the concepts that the textbook assumes me to understand but I don’t. Circular motion When a weight (or any other objects) is hanged on a string and doing circular motion, the length of the string, the velocity and the centripetal acceleration is […]

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This post contains some additional notes for IB Physics Unit 2 Mechanics, especially the concepts that the textbook assumes me to understand but I don’t.

Circular motion

When a weight (or any other objects) is hanged on a string and doing circular motion, the length of the string, the velocity and the centripetal acceleration is linked by the formula:

Since F = m · a, the force applied on the object will therefore be:

Knowing the formulas, what are the magnitudes and directions of velocity and acceleration in circular motion?

Acceleration and velocity in circular motion

Acceleration has constant magnitude but varying direction (therefore even though the object might be traveling at a constant speed, it is constantly accelerating). Velocity is a vector. When the object travels it is constantly changing. When it is traveling at a constant speed it has a constant magnitude but a varying direction.

The velocity and acceleration in an object in circular motion are always perpendicular.

Uniform circular motion can be described as the motion of an object in a circle at a constant speed.

Collisions

There are two types of collisions, elastic and inelastic.

Video from Khan Academy: https://www.khanacademy.org/science/ap-physics-1/ap-linear-momentum/inelastic-collisions-and-2d-collisions-ap/v/elastic-and-inelastic-collisions

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Project SIAT – UI / UX Coding https://nightingale.becomingcelia.com/2020/10/project-siat-ui-ux-coding.html https://nightingale.becomingcelia.com/2020/10/project-siat-ui-ux-coding.html#respond Thu, 15 Oct 2020 13:23:00 +0000 https://nightingale.becomingcelia.com/?p=800 In the post I wrote a month ago, Project SIAT – Get Started, I wrote about how I finished designing the webpage. With the design in hand, I moved into the second stage of making the website (in a hurry), front-end coding. The design I put on the previous post was a high-fidelity interface made […]

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In the post I wrote a month ago, Project SIAT – Get Started, I wrote about how I finished designing the webpage. With the design in hand, I moved into the second stage of making the website (in a hurry), front-end coding.

The design I put on the previous post was a high-fidelity interface made with Sketch. It will look exactly the final website I create but it is merely a design, in other words, it is a combination of images, text and shapes, which I put together via dragging and dropping. In order to make it into a real website that visitors can visit with a browser and interact with, I will need to write codes that make up the website and try to make it look exactly like the design as best as I can.

Before I get started with the project, I knew how to write HTML, CSS and can play around with the basics of JavaScript. For the project, my teacher suggested that I should learn React because the JavaScript library is very popular right now. It is for frontend development, allowing websites to update without reloading the page and is fast, scalable and simple. I knew nothing about React so therefore I went through the lessons and tutorials on Codecademy.

Image from reactjs.org

The process of making this website has brought me uncountable knowledge and practices, much more than what I have expected. Within these, the most beneficial ones are:

  • Learning about the basics of React
  • Practicing frontend programming languages like HTML and CSS, making my website with them independently for the first time
  • Self help skills, how to solve a problem by getting help from online resources efficiently

Below, I will introduce some of my codes, which is also a reminder for myself in the future.

This is the final file structure of the project:

├── App.js
├── App.scss
├── DropDown.js
├── DropDown.scss
├── Navigation.js
├── Navigation.scss
├── articlePage
│   ├── Article.js
│   ├── Article.scss
│   ├── ArticleBlock.js
│   ├── ArticleBlock.scss
│   └── webCrawler.js
├── assets
│   └── images
│       ├── artwork.png
│       ├── bear-fullwidth.png
│       ├── bear.png
│       ├── bg-dark-green.png
│       ├── elephant-fullwidth.png
│       ├── elephant.png
│       ├── icon.png
│       ├── pangolin-fullwidth.png
│       ├── pangolin.png
│       ├── rhino-fullwidth.png
│       ├── rhino.png
│       ├── thumbnail.png
│       ├── tiger-fullwidth.png
│       └── tiger.png
├── homePage
│   ├── FullWidthSpecies.js
│   ├── FullWidthSpecies.scss
│   ├── Home.js
│   ├── Home.scss
│   ├── Species.js
│   └── Species.scss
├── index.css
├── index.js

Amongst these files, the most amazing and important file in my opinion, is App.js. It is in the root of the project directory and it role in the website is somewhat like the central nervous system in a body, connecting different body parts and pass signals between them. It doesn’t (shouldn’t) include any specific code about the details (like the text or color) on each webpage, but it shows the logic of rendering the pages, e.g.

In React, if two pages, let’s call them A and B, have large amount of codes that are similar, they do not need to be two separated HTML files. Instead, page A and page B can be using the same files and mark the parts where they are different. Therefore, when the user switches from page A to page B, only a small part of the webpage needs to be re-rendered instead of the entire file. For instance, the same navigation bar and footer is used no matter which page it is in the website, therefore App.js is written like so:

<Navigation />
{/* will always run no matter which page it is on */}
<Switch>
{/* the part that changes depending on the url */}
    ...
</Switch>
<footer className="text-light">
{/* like the navigation part, doesn't change */}
    ...
</footer>

Let’s zoom into the <Switch> component. It decides what to render based on the url. For the code below, the second <Route> component says that if the path is equal to “/”, then code inside the component “Home” will be rendered. The first <Route> component is more complicated. It receive props called speciesId from another webpage, and it passes these props as attributes into the “Article” component. After this, the “Article” component will render codes depending on the attributes.

<Switch>
    <Route
        path="/article/:speciesId"
        render={(props) => <Article {...props} />}
    />
    <Route path="/">
        <Home />
    </Route>
</Switch>

I found this very interesting when learning to write it because I have never learned about making dynamic pages before and I thought that when the user enters a url, the file inside the specific folder pointed by the url will be rendered. Now I found out that the position of the file with codes of the webpage isn’t restricted in any specific folder. Instead, it can be anywhere and as long as the Router points to it, it can be rendered (therefore it is possible to have two address in the webpage leading to the same file.

As a component that exist in all pages, the dropdown menu from the navigation bar is a fancy component. As introduced in the last post, it is inspired by the dropdown menu of the National Geographic website. It takes me (a JavaScript noob) three hours to code the dropdown animation and the mouseover effect of the menu.

The menu on the National Geographic website is amazing, it seems like a lot of things are moving in all directions at the same time. I was deeply impressed by the design, but I had no idea how to start coding my own. Therefore I began to do careful observations and inspected the elements on the page one by one.

After a while, I started to get how everything works. Basically, there is a huge layer that covers the whole page — a <div> element called “menu-backdrop” that is placed above the original webpage but beneath the contents shown in the menu. When the user click on the “Menu” text in the navigation bar, menu-backdrop moves down on its own and the animation continues for about 1 second.

All the other contents that are above the backdrop show up one by one, from the top to the bottom at the same time as the backdrop moves down. The way they show up isn’t just in a sudden, or fading in, but they are translating — moving out from a layer where they are hidden beneath into places where users can see them.

Now that I got the general idea of how things are supposed to work, I started my attempts to turn the idea into code with the knowledges that I already know. The embarrassing here that I realized not long after I finished testing and debugging my code was that I was interacting directly with DOM elements in the webpage, which shouldn’t really happen since I am coding in React and not JavaScript. This had made my teacher rather speechless. She thought of rewriting the huge block of JavaScript code into React with me but later told me to keep it as it was — it was just too time-consuming.

activate() {
    document.getElementsByClassName(
      "dropdown-main-container"
    )[0].style.display = "flex";
    var elem = document.getElementById("menu-backdrop");
    // elem is the backdrop
    var label = document.getElementsByClassName("species-label")[0];
    // label is the red text that says "Species--" according to the above video
    var button = document.getElementsByClassName("dropdown-button")[0];
    elem.style.transitionDelay = "0s";
    label.style.transitionDelay = "0s";
    elem.classList.add("active");
    label.classList.add("active");
    button.innerHTML =
      'Close <i class="fa fa-angle-double-up" aria-hidden="true"></i>';
    var num = document.getElementsByClassName("slider").length;
    for (var count = 0; count < num; count++) {
      var classname = "slider-text" + count.toString(10);
      var item = document.getElementsByClassName(classname)[0];
      item.style.marginTop = "5rem";
      item.style.animationName = "slide-up";
      item.style.animationDelay = (count * 120 + 300).toString(10) + "ms";
    }
}

Below is the part that I think is the strangest but at the same time the most amazing. I am not sure if people usually code like this, but I am using a FOR loop to go through “slider-text” elements one by one according to their classes, then adding corresponding and unique styles onto them. “animationDelay” is different for each slider-text element and I am calculating it in the last line of code below.

var num = document.getElementsByClassName("slider").length;
for (var count = 0; count < num; count++) {
      var classname = "slider-text" + count.toString(10);
      var item = document.getElementsByClassName(classname)[0];
      item.style.marginTop = "5rem";
      item.style.animationName = "slide-up";
      item.style.animationDelay = (count * 120 + 300).toString(10) + "ms";
}

I wasn’t able to finish introducing the UI and UX part of the project. I started this post more than 3 months ago and hasn’t found time to finish it up and I am going to take my mocks soon so I gotta start preparing for it. So the above is what I have so far and I am posting it since I probably will not have time to finish it this year. Will finish it once I got time after the mocks!

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Add Math Test: Reflection https://nightingale.becomingcelia.com/2020/09/add-math-test-reflection.html https://nightingale.becomingcelia.com/2020/09/add-math-test-reflection.html#respond Mon, 21 Sep 2020 15:06:43 +0000 https://nightingale.becomingcelia.com/?p=964 For the CIM part of the paper, workings are compulsory in order to gain all the marks. For the angle calculating question on the front page, I got one out of two marks for getting the right answer but not writing the steps. There is one question that asks to find the area of a […]

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For the CIM part of the paper, workings are compulsory in order to gain all the marks. For the angle calculating question on the front page, I got one out of two marks for getting the right answer but not writing the steps.

There is one question that asks to find the area of a triangle, given two sides and the angle in between. When using the formula of Area = 0.5 · a · b · sin(C), I wrote the formula then calculated the answer directly, skipping the step of substituting the values of a, b and C in. And I got … 0 out of the 2 marks. So the step of substituting values into a formula should always be written.

It is also no ok, surprisingly (to me), to skip steps when solving equations. When I got to the step 16k2 - 112k + 192 < 0, the next step I wrote was 3 < k < 4, skipping the step of factorising the quadratic expression, I got a mark off. It is necessary to simplify the left side of < into k2 - 7k + 12 then factorise it: (k + 3)(k - 4).

After these marks lost due to skipping workings, here are my silly mistakes due to misreading the questions or not reading the key instructions in the question.

No.1

The graph below shows the relationship between log10x and log10y. Find y in terms of x.

So I went finding the formula assuming that the graph was plotted with y against x … and lost half of the marks.

No.2

The function f is defined by f(x) = 63/(4x-1) for 1 ≤ x ≤ 16.
The graph y = f(x) is shown below.
Find the range of f.

So here through the graph I found that the graph seems to have a horizontal asymptote of y = 0 and therefore I wrote – range: {f|f∈ℝ, f>0}… And obviously I got 0 mark for writing this. I didn’t use anything given in the question other than the graph. The right way to find the range should be substituting the highest and lowest value of the domain into the function to find out the highest and lowest values of the range.

So the above mistakes takes 9 marks away and I was barely over the mark required for a “7”. It is too bad that I don’t get a second chance for doing a paper for the report in October, but hopefully when it comes to the mocks in November, I would be able to avoid these mistakes.

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IGCSE Geo Revision – Tourism https://nightingale.becomingcelia.com/2020/09/igcse-geo-revision-tourism.html https://nightingale.becomingcelia.com/2020/09/igcse-geo-revision-tourism.html#respond Sun, 06 Sep 2020 07:36:47 +0000 https://nightingale.becomingcelia.com/?p=944 7 Mark question – A “For-Everything” Case Study Name of location: The Maldives The Maldives lies Southwest of Sri Lanka and India, about 700 kilometers from the mainland. It is a small island nation in South Asia in the Arabian sea of the Indian ocean. It’s made up of a chain of 26 atolls spanning […]

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7 Mark question – A “For-Everything” Case Study

Name of location: The Maldives

The Maldives lies Southwest of Sri Lanka and India, about 700 kilometers from the mainland. It is a small island nation in South Asia in the Arabian sea of the Indian ocean. It’s made up of a chain of 26 atolls spanning around 298 square kilometers. It has a population of 540,544 and 142,909 for its capital city, Malè, in 2017.

Tourism is one of the most important industry in the Maldives, accounting for 30% of the Maldives total GDP and 90% of its tax revenues. Every year, 1.5 million tourists go to Maldives and Maldives earns a total amount of $2 millions USD from tourism. Most tourists go to Maldives for the water sports there such as snorkelling, scuba diving, sailing and kayaking. At the same time, Maldives also offers a biodiverse environment for visitors to explore.

There are many human attractions and physical attractions in Maldives. Human attractions include:

  • Dive clubs
  • Spa’s
  • Commercial Districts providing entertainment/shopping
  • Fish Market (In Malè)
  • National Museum (In Malè), displays antiques from Maldives Buddhist era

Physical attractions in Maldives are mainly its beaches and wildlife. On its beaches, there are:

  • Peaceful with sounds of the sea waves
  • Palm trees
  • Species of fish at the shore (also applies to wildlife)
  • Atolls/lagoons
  • White sand
  • Good weather/tropical

And the wild life (natural environment) exploration activities there are mainly explored with snorkelling or scuba diving activities:

  • Coral reefs
  • Whale sharks/manta rays
  • Turtles

Tourism has both positive and negative impacts on Maldives. First of all, tourism brings many benefits. Firstly, it generates employment for the tertiary sector in the country – it brings in about $600 million a year and it also accounts for 90% of the government’s revenue. Secondly, through working in the tourism industry, local people can learn new skills and languages. Fourthly, when tourists spend money in local businesses, the multiplier effect takes place. In this way tourism generates 60% of all foreign currency earned. At the same time, infrastructures in Maldives are developed. The natural environment might be better preserved as they are attractions to the tourists.

However, at the same time, tourism also has lots of disadvantages. For instance, tourism activities are harming the natural environment — snorkelling and scuba diving are damaging the corals and the marine ecosystems. Also, the jobs of the local people are badly paid and some of them do not work in good working conditions. Most resort staffs in the Maldives are only paid $1500 SGD annually. Lastly, the narrowness of Maldives’ economy makes it highly vulnerable to external shocks beyond its control such as natural disasters, political strikes and steep rise in oil and gas prices or other commodities.

Tourism in the Maldives is managed in a few ways. Firstly, initiatives have been formed to reduce tourist numbers in groups, committing to long term plans that benefit locals by using local accommodation and so on. Also, the government states that for each island developed into a resort, one must be left as a reserve. Furthermore, recycling efforts are made within hotels such as the Furaveri Island Resort & Spa (Raa atoll) which has a water bottle plant on site, active for two years which recycles glass bottles for guests to use on excursions. There are strict fishing regulations enforcements to maintain fish stocks and preserve the reefs. At the same time, as the government is taking more initiative to support the sustainable tourism movement, tourists themselves are starting to become invested in sustainable tourism.

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IGCSE Geo Revision – Environmental Risks https://nightingale.becomingcelia.com/2020/09/igcse-geo-revision-environmental-risks.html https://nightingale.becomingcelia.com/2020/09/igcse-geo-revision-environmental-risks.html#respond Sat, 05 Sep 2020 11:49:17 +0000 https://nightingale.becomingcelia.com/?p=931 7 Mark Case Study Questions Causes and Effects of Pollution Human activities may cause water and air pollution. Choose an example which you have studied of either water pollution or air pollution. Describe the causes this pollution and its effects on people and the environment. [7] Causes the discharge of harmful substances into rivers, lakes […]

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7 Mark Case Study Questions

Causes and Effects of Pollution

Human activities may cause water and air pollution. Choose an example which you have studied of either water pollution or air pollution. Describe the causes this pollution and its effects on people and the environment. [7]

Causes

  • the discharge of harmful substances into rivers, lakes and seas
  • Nitrate fertilisers are very soluble in water. They are easily washed off fields by rain, and then into rivers and lakes. Because nitrates are soluble they cannot easily be removed from the water.
  • Pesticides used by farmers include herbicides (to kill weeds) and insecticides (to kill insects). These substances may be washed or blown into rivers and lakes.
  • Human sewage is another source of water pollution. If untreated sewage gets into rivers, microorganisms decompose it. They use oxygen from the water for aerobic respiration. As a result there is less oxygen dissolved in water, so aquatic organisms such as fish and insects may be unable to survive.

Impacts

  • Eutrophication

Eutrophication encourages the growth of algae. These form a green bloom over the water surface, preventing sunlight reaching other water plants. These plants die because they are unable to carry out photosynthesis. Bacteria decompose the dead plants, respiring and using up the oxygen in the water as they do this. The low oxygen levels make it difficult for aquatic insects and fish to live, and eventually the lake may be left completely lifeless.

Local people loses clean water sources, food sources (animals living in the water) and some land animals might decrease in number as they might be closely linked to animals living in the water.

Photo by Riley on Unsplash

Research for all Case Studies

Location: Borneo
Economic activity: Deforestation

General Introduction

Borneo is the third-largest island in the world and the largest in Asia, covering an area of roughly 297,000 square miles. Deforestation is severe in Borneo in the past 5 decades. In 1973 forest covered 75% of the land area in Borneo and this had reduced to 30% by 2010.

Causes of Deforestation

1. Logging

During the 1980’s to 1990’s, logging was taking place in Borneo at a rapid rate. This is from the fact that the government gave some of the land with the rainforest and the best way they could utilise it is to harvest the wood. Eventually logging became illegal in Borneo, but logging still exists on Borneo to this day.

2. Agriculture

One cause of deforestation is agriculture as land needs to be cleared in order to make space for palm oil and pulp plantations. In Indonesia palm oil production has increased from 600,000 hectares in 1985 to more than 6 million hectares by 2007. The continued expansion of these industries will come at the cost of the life of animals, habitats, and ecosystems as a whole.

3. Fuel

A cause of the rapid deforestation of the Borneo Rainforest is the amount of wood fuel needed to be used for cooking, heating and industrial uses. Wood remains the chief source of fuel in rural areas and also contributes to the Urban consumption. Some sectors of the industry in Southeast Asia depend on the fuel wood entirely. Between 1980 and 2000 more round wood was harvested from Borneo than from Africa and the Amazon combined.

Photo by Yi Chun Chen on Unsplash

Effect of deforestation on the local natural environment

1. Lack of oxygen and destruction of ecosystems

Borneo has 5% of all species in the world. Large animals like orangutans and elephants are especially prone to this as they need large areas of land to survive. The destruction of ecosystems has caused species dying out and the decrease of biodiversity. Roads built for tree cutting also affects smaller species as this leads to the separation of habitat ranges.

2. Air pollution (haze)

Palm oil plantations, pulp plantations, illegal logging and the forest fires are the key drivers to deforestation in Borneo. This can lead to even more harmful effects as Palm Oil plantations are burnt once used, causing what we know as haze, which is bad for animals as well as humans. This affects  people in Borneo and around South East Asia. In Palangkaraya, the capital and the largest city of Central Kalimantan in Borneo, more than 500,000 people to suffer from respiratory ailments in 2015.

3. Soil erosion

As trees are uproots, and cut down, the earth that is held together by roots can be easily washed away with rain or drainage. This can lead to the destruction of habitats especially plant life on the shrub level of the rainforest. Without soil, they have no nutrients and nowhere to ‘root’ themselves. 

Effect of deforestation on the global environment

1. Lost of world’s biodiversity

Deforestation leads to the loss of biodiversity, not just in Borneo, but all over the world. More than 80% of the worlds species remain only in the tropical rainforest. It is estimated that about 50-100 species are being lost each day. This is because the animals are losing their habitat.

2. Climate change / Global Warming

Destroying the forests mean that more CO2 will remain the atmosphere as there are less trees to absorb it. This will not only alter the climate of the region, but also the average temperature of the whole globe. An enhanced global warming is caused as an excess of sunlight is being trapped inside the the atmosphere of Earth that is thickened due to the emitted CO2. Many animals around the world depend on the wet climate of the tropical rainforests and cooler temperature but with deforestation the forests become drier and hotter, killing many animals from harsh weather conditions.

Effects of deforestation on people in Borneo

Haze

Haze is caused by the burning of woods in the process of deforestation. It is detrimental to people’s health. In 2015, haze in Palangkaraya, the capital and the largest city of Central Kalimantan in Borneo, causes more than 500,000 people to suffer from respiratory ailments. Haze also creates conditions that can support many serious pathogens such as malaria and the Nipah virus.

Soil erosion

[The part before about soil erosion]. Soil erosion causes severe impacts on local people. Firstly, from the aspect of agriculture, soil erosion removes top soil which is the most productive part of the soil profile for agricultural purposes, reducing the soil’s ability to store water and nutrients and possibly causes losses of newly planted crops. This will result in lower yields and higher production costs in Borneo.

Also, some toxic substances like nutrients, fertilisers and herbicides or pesticides, causing fish dying off in the water. This causes a loss of food source for people living in the polluted area. Also the fishing industry will be hugely impacted as less fresh fish could be caught in the area.

Cover Photo by Holger Link on Unsplash

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CS Revision – Arrays https://nightingale.becomingcelia.com/2020/08/cs-revision-arrays.html https://nightingale.becomingcelia.com/2020/08/cs-revision-arrays.html#respond Sat, 29 Aug 2020 09:14:28 +0000 https://nightingale.becomingcelia.com/?p=923 Arrays are list of similar items, usually used in loops and repetitions. They contain similar items. The items in the list are the elements of the array. One-dimensional array are lists identified by the use of a single name and each item int eh list can be found by an index number showing the place […]

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Arrays are list of similar items, usually used in loops and repetitions. They contain similar items. The items in the list are the elements of the array.

One-dimensional array are lists identified by the use of a single name and each item int eh list can be found by an index number showing the place in the list.

What to consider when using a one-dimensional array:

  • name of the array depending on its uses
  • size depending on the number of elements in the array
  • datatype depending on the type of element stored (names, ages, address, etc)

Example of arrays syntax in pseudocode:

DECLARE teachernames: ARRAY[0:2] of String
teachernames[0] <--- "Mr. Li"
teachernames[1] <--- "Ms. Lloyd"
teachernames[2] <--- "Mrs. Fox"
FOR i 0 TO 2
    OUTPUT teachernames[i]
NEXT

So generally, DECLARE arrayname: ARRAY[0:arraylength] of datatype.

The concept of parallel arrays is very convenient to use in problem solving. Parallel arrays have the same sizes and use the same variable for their indexes.

Going through an array item by item is called traversing the array.

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Vanuatu · Stranded https://nightingale.becomingcelia.com/2020/08/vanuatu-%c2%b7-stranded.html https://nightingale.becomingcelia.com/2020/08/vanuatu-%c2%b7-stranded.html#respond Tue, 25 Aug 2020 10:43:08 +0000 https://nightingale.becomingcelia.com/?p=898 The first segment (paragraphs 1-8) is about the author’s impressions of the island. The second segment (paragraphs 9-10) is about the author’s childhood fear. Explain how the writer uses language to convey meaning and create effect in these two paragraphs. In the first segment, the writer expresses his hatred towards the island through the use […]

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The first segment (paragraphs 1-8) is about the author’s impressions of the island. The second segment (paragraphs 9-10) is about the author’s childhood fear. Explain how the writer uses language to convey meaning and create effect in these two paragraphs.

In the first segment, the writer expresses his hatred towards the island through the use of metaphor and comparison. Firstly, the writer illustrates Vanuatu after the lights fades as “coal-shaft black” and “back-of-your-closet black”. Here, the writer describes the darkness at late Vanuatu as coal and the back of a closet. The two continuous metaphors here effectively suggest that the impermeable darkness is, in a way, dirty and unpleasant to the writer, therefore expressing the writer’s hatred and negative impressions of the environment. Secondly, the writer says that the hotel is “a magnet to flies”. The metaphor used here vividly shows the great amount of flies in the area, as if they are being attracted by something in the hotel. The detailed descriptions of the flies shows the writer’s disgust towards the hotel and possibly his hatred towards the island. Thirdly, the writer claims that the small kerosene lamps among the table “make the slightest dent on the monolithic emptiness of the world beyond this one”. Here, the writer compares the great contrast between the impacts of these small lamps on the environment and the feeling of emptiness of the rest of the world around him, concluding that the lamps could not even make a dent. The comparison in the sentence indicates that nothing could ease the desolation of the place and the loneliness of the writer, which additionally highlights his hatred towards the island.

In the second segment, the writer conveys the great impacts brought by his childhood fears through the use of the rule of three, repetition and metaphor. Firstly, the writer claims that his childhood fears are mainly “That sense of abject abandonment, the helplessness, the distress”. The rule of three is used here as the writer lists out the components that made up his fear, making the language more emotive, highlighting the fact that these emotions are still left in his heart even after he had grown up. Secondly, the writer further describes his fear in detail as “nobody knows I’m here, nobody cares, and nobody’s coming back for me”. The technique of anaphora is used here as the word “nobody” is repeated at the beginning of each phrase, making the phrases more and more emotional. This emphasises the fact that the writer was left alone, how helpless he was and therefore indicates that these childhood fears will cause great impacts on the writer. Thirdly, the writer metaphorically describes his childhood fears as “thumbprint of anxiety”. The metaphor used in the phrase effectively shows the characteristics of the anxiety left in his heart by his childhood fears: perpetual and long-lasting, just like a thumbprint, which is always there throughout a person’s life and will never change no matter what. With this metaphor, the writer shows the greatness of the impacts of his fears. Therefore, the great impacts brought by the writer’s childhood fears are conveyed to the readers through the use of the rule of three, repetition and metaphor.

Cover Art by Mrs-White from DeviantArt

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