imported>Chunbum Park |
imported>John Stephenson |
| (130 intermediate revisions by 5 users not shown) |
| Line 1: |
Line 1: |
| == '''[[Los Alamos National Laboratory]]''' ==
| | {{:{{FeaturedArticleTitle}}}} |
| ''by [[User:Milton Beychok|Milton Beychok]], [[User:Ro Thorpe|Ro Thorpe]] and [[User:Daniel Mietchen|Daniel Mietchen]]
| | <small> |
| ----
| | ==Footnotes== |
| | |
| '''Los Alamos National Laboratory''' (LANL), located in [[Los Alamos]], [[New Mexico]], is one of several [[U.S. Department of Energy]] (DOE) national laboratories. It is noteworthy as the site where the first [[atomic weapon]] was developed under a heavy cloak of secrecy during [[World War II]], and has been known variously as '''''Site Y''''', '''''Los Alamos Laboratory''''', and '''''Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory'''''. Today, it is recognized as one of the world's leading science and technology institutes.
| |
| | |
| {{Image|Trinity test.jpg|right|200px|Trinity test of an [[Nuclear weapon|atomic bomb]] on July 15, 1945 at 0.016 seconds after detonation. The fireball was about 200 metres wide.}} | |
| Since 2006, LANL has been managed and operated by [[Los Alamos National Security, LLC]] (LANS).<ref name=LANS/>
| |
| LANL's self-stated mission is to ensure the safety, security, and reliability of the nation's nuclear deterrent.<ref name=LANL-Mission/> Its research work serves to advance [[Biology|bioscience]], [[chemistry]], [[computer science]], [[Earth science|earth]] and [[environmental science]]s, [[materials science]], and [[physics]] disciplines.<ref name=LANL-About/><ref name=LANL-Overview/>
| |
| | |
| ===History=== | |
| | |
| The [[Manhattan Project]] was the secret [[United States]] project conducted primarily during [[World War II]] with the participation of the [[United Kingdom]] and [[Canada]] that culminated in developing the world's first [[nuclear weapon]], commonly referred to at that time as an ''atomic bomb''.
| |
| | |
| The project was initiated in 1939 by [[U.S. President]] [[Franklin Delano Roosevelt]] after he received a letter from physicist [[Albert Einstein]] (drafted by fellow physicist [[Leó Szilárd]]) urging the study of [[nuclear fission]] for military purposes, under fears that [[Nazi Germany]] would be first to develop nuclear weapons. Roosevelt started a small investigation into the matter, which eventually became the massive [[Manhattan Project]] that employed more than 130,000 people at universities across the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada as well as at the three major design, development and production facilities: Los Alamos; Hanford, Washington; and Oak Ridge, Tennessee.
| |
| | |
| ''[[Los Alamos National Laboratory|.... (read more)]]''
| |
| | |
| {| class="wikitable collapsible collapsed" style="width: 90%; float: center; margin: 0.5em 1em 0.8em 0px;"
| |
| |-
| |
| ! style="text-align: center;" | [[Los Alamos National Laboratory#References|notes]]
| |
| |-
| |
| |
| |
| {{reflist|2}} | | {{reflist|2}} |
| |}
| | </small> |
Latest revision as of 09:19, 11 September 2020
The Mathare Valley slum near Nairobi, Kenya, in 2009.
Poverty is deprivation based on lack of material resources. The concept is value-based and political. Hence its definition, causes and remedies (and the possibility of remedies) are highly contentious.[1] The word poverty may also be used figuratively to indicate a lack, instead of material goods or money, of any kind of quality, as in a poverty of imagination.
Definitions
Primary and secondary poverty
The use of the terms primary and secondary poverty dates back to Seebohm Rowntree, who conducted the second British survey to calculate the extent of poverty. This was carried out in York and was published in 1899. He defined primary poverty as having insufficient income to “obtain the minimum necessaries for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency”. In secondary poverty, the income “would be sufficient for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency were it not that some portion of it is absorbed by some other expenditure.” Even with these rigorous criteria he found that 9.9% of the population was in primary poverty and a further 17.9% in secondary.[2]
Absolute and comparative poverty
More recent definitions tend to use the terms absolute and comparative poverty. Absolute is in line with Rowntree's primary poverty, but comparative poverty is usually expressed in terms of ability to play a part in the society in which a person lives. Comparative poverty will thus vary from one country to another.[3] The difficulty of definition is illustrated by the fact that a recession can actually reduce "poverty".
Causes of poverty
The causes of poverty most often considered are:
- Character defects
- An established “culture of poverty”, with low expectations handed down from one generation to another
- Unemployment
- Irregular employment, and/or low pay
- Position in the life cycle (see below) and household size
- Disability
- Structural inequality, both within countries and between countries. (R H Tawney: “What thoughtful rich people call the problem of poverty, thoughtful poor people call with equal justice a problem of riches”)[4]
As noted above, most of these, or the extent to which they can be, or should be changed, are matters of heated controversy.
- ↑ Alcock, P. Understanding poverty. Macmillan. 1997. ch 1.
- ↑ Harris, B. The origins of the British welfare state. Palgrave Macmillan. 2004. Also, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
- ↑ Alcock, Pt II
- ↑ Alcock, Preface to 1st edition and pt III.
