text:
French/Lessons/Everyday life

Pronominal verbs are verbs that include pronouns. These pronouns are me, te, se, nous, and vous and are used as either direct objects or indirect objects, depending on the verb that they modify. There are three types of pronominal verbs: reflexive verbs, reciprocal verbs, and naturally pronominal verbs.

Reflexive verbs
Reflexive verbs reflect the action on the subject.
 * Je me lave. - I wash myself.
 * Nous nous lavons. - We wash ourselves.
 * Ils se lavent. - They wash themselves.

Reflexive verbs can also be used as infinitives.
 * Je vais me laver. - I'm going to wash myself.
 * Je ne vais pas me laver. - I'm not going to wash myself.

Reciprocal verbs
With reciprocal verbs, people perform actions to each other.
 * Nous nous aimons. - We like each other.

Naturally pronominal verbs
Some verbs are pronominal without performing a reflexive or reciprocal action.
 * Tu te souviens ? - You remember?

If the subject is performing the action on him or herself, the verbs are reflexive. However, if the subject were to act on someone else, the verb is no longer reflexive; instead the reflexive pronoun becomes a direct object.

 * Je m'habille - I get dressed.
 * Je t'habille - I get you dressed.

In the passé composé, the verbs use être and the participle must agree in gender and number with the subject.

 * Pierre s'est habillé.
 * Alice s'est habillée.
 * Georges et Martin se sont habillés.
 * Lisette et Rose se sont habillées.
 * Marc et Claire se sont habillés.
 * Je m'appelle Lucie, et je me suis levée à six heures.
 * Jean et Paul, vous vous êtes levés assez tard.

The word means need, and thus the expression  translates to to have need of.

The past participle drops the circumflex accent in its other forms: feminine singular due; masculine plural dus; feminine plural dues.

Used as a noun, le devoir means duty or exercise.

Comparison
The verb falloir differs from similar verbs such as avoir besoin de [faire quelque chose] (to need [to do something]) and. Falloir is always used with the impersonal il only in the third person singular, whereas devoir can be used with all subject pronouns in all tenses.

Falloir expresses general necessities:
 * To live, one must eat.
 * To speak French well, one must conjugate verbs correctly.

Devoir expresses more personally what someone must do:
 * I want to pass my French test, so I must study verb conjugations.

Avoir besoin de [faire quelque chose] expresses need:
 * J'ai besoin d'étudier pour mon examen, il est demain. - I need to study for my test, it's tomorrow.

Dormir, meaning to sleep, is an irregular French verb.

The verb, meaning to put to sleep, and its reflexive form are conjugated in the same way as dormir. The noun, meaning dormitory, is derived from dormir.

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: French/Lessons/Everyday life


text:
French/Lessons/Rural life

The verb, meaning to pursue, to torment, to carry on, or to sue, is conjugated in the same way as suivre.

Naître is the only -aître verb that takes être as its helping verb (and therefore agrees with the subject as a past participle in perfect tenses).

The verb is conjugated in the same way as naître.

When pronominal verbs are conjugated in perfect tenses, is used as the auxiliary verb.

Reflexive verbs
In perfect tenses, the past participles agree with the direct object pronoun, but not the indirect object pronoun, in gender and number. Therefore it would only agree when the reflexive pronoun is the direct object. Also remember that the past participle does not agree with the direct object if it goes after the verb.

Reciprocal verbs
Like reflexive verbs, the past participle of reciprocal verbs agrees in number and gender with the direct object if it goes before the verb. It therefore agrees with all reciprocal pronouns that function as direct objects.

The reciprocal pronoun can also function as an indirect object without a direct object pronoun.

Naturally pronominal verbs
In perfect tenses, these verbs agree with the direct object if it goes before the verb. Otherwise, the past participle agrees with the subject.

Note that assis(e)(es), the past participle of s'asseoir (to sit), does not change in the masculine plural form.

title: French/Lessons/Rural life


text:
French/Lessons/Communication

Verbs ending in -aître, such as connaître, meaning to know (personally), are conjugated irregularly.

The noun means knowledge or acquaintance:

The derived adjective means known or famous and the derived noun  means the known or a well-known person. Likewise, means unknown or strange and   means stranger:

1Naître has an irregular past participle (né) and takes être as its auxiliary verb in perfect tenses.

Connaître is used to say that you know someone, or are acquainted with someone or something:

Savoir is used to say that you know a fact or piece of information:

Savoir is also used to say that you know how to do something:

Téléphoner (à) is used to say that you are calling (to) someone. In French, you call to someone, so the verb is used with indirect, and not direct, objects:

Appeler is also used:

, meaning to say or to tell, is conjugated irregularly.

Formation
The related verb means to repeat, to restate, or to retell. The related phrase means to mean.

The following verbs are conjugated like dire, except that the second person plural form is -dissez, not -dites.

is also conjugated in this way, except that the third person plural is maudissent.

Formation
The verb, meaning to resend or to send back, is conjugated in the same way as envoyer.

 Verbs ending in -cevoir, such as recevoir, meaning to receive, are conjugated irregularly.

Appeler means to call or to call out.

Appeler is also used to say what your name is. Je m'appelle... literally means I call myself…, but in English you would say My name is…. Appeler is a regular -er verb, but is also stem changing.

Formation
, meaning to call back, recall, or remind, is conjugated in the same way as appeler. The reflexive form se rappeler means to remember.

Related words
The related masculine noun means call or appeal:

The noun means reminder or recall:

title: French/Lessons/Communication


text:
User talk:67.181.13.82

If you do not stop vandalising, I'm going to have to report you to the admins for banning.

--Dragontamer 03:02, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

title: User talk:67.181.13.82


text:
Knowledge Engineering for Historians/Modelling Introducing Contexts

Introducing Contexts
Since this is a book for historians, we will mention that there is a a whole history of the concepts underlying the following discussions, that we will however not get into just now, because they do not contribute to an initial understanding.

The basic problem of knowledge engineering is that the logical theories that perform the actual reasoning cannot deal well with inconsistent or contradicting information (remember those exploding computers on Star Trek?). Unfortunately, the human theories that knowledge engineering models are often mutually inconsistent.

Enter contexts, which basically allow us to assign the individual statements to individual speakers.

Contexts as additional Arguments
Speaking more as the knowledge engineers we are trying to become, we can best explain contexts by introducing a new relation: let  mean "is true (in context)".

;; the controversy surrounding Wolfang Amadeus Mozart's relationship ;; with Antonio Salieri represented kills(AntonioSalieri,WolfgangAmadeusMozart) not(kills(AntonioSalieri,WolfgangAmadeusMozart))

;; contextualizing the claims via ist ist(Amadeus-TheMovie,kills(AntonioSalieri,WolfgangAmadeusMozart)) ist(Austria18thCenturyContext,not(kills(AntonioSalieri,WolfgangAmadeusMozart)))

While the first representation will clearly cause a contradiction, the second need not; indeed, the claims are nicely segregated into the different contexts. However, contextualization is an all-or-nothing proposition; either every statement is "curried" with a context, or none are. Typically, this situation is handled by identifying a base or default context where those things that are not sensibly contextualizable (i.e. shared by all contexts) can be placed.

Context Hierarchies
Contexts can be organized into subsumption hierarchies, just as we saw that type hierarchies can be.

Some of the background knowledge that our two contexts,  and , share could now be moved into a parent context, say,   or the like. Such movement of knowledge into other contexts is sometimes called lifting. Such an approach makes developing a new context very affordable: Most of what needs to be known has already been said in other contexts, which can then be simply subsumed in the new context.

Contexts are not First-Order-Logic

 * explain why the first-orderization using arguments does not work

Reasoning into Contexts
A side-effect of the  approach to context representation is that it is relatively straight-forwarded to reason into other contexts. For example the following query could be used to find all cases where the movie and the real life of Mozart differ:

;; get the points of contention ist(?CONTEXT-A,?SENTENCE) && subsumesContext(?CONTEXT-A,GenericMozartFama) && ist(?CONTEXT-B,not(?SENTENCE)) && subsumesContext(?CONTEXT-B,GenericMozartFama)

Again, this is not a first-order logic query anymore, because we are no longer looking just at relations, but at whole sentences which include predicates. This is a higher-order query.

Some Notes on Implementation
Some representations languages, such as CycL are designed with strong assumptions about the availability of contexts; there they are called microtheories and have special implementation support in OpenCyc and other implementations for CycL. Many representation or reasoning systems unfortunately do not have explicit support for contexts. And because of the non-FOL needs, simulating contexts may turn out to be difficult.

Conclusion
After this short overview of what contribution contexts make to the reasoning in knowledge engineering, we are ready to go into a large example that will highlight all of the features we have discussed so far. The hope is that this will draw the disparate pieces together and give you an idea of how knowledge engineering for historians becomes actionable.

Without further ado, let's look at our modelling example, Modelling the Christmas Story (see also Christmas).


text:
JLPT Guide/JLPT N4 Kanji

The following list shows most of the kanji that the examinee should know in order to pass level N4 of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test. There are 179 kanji in this list, aside from the 80 kanji found in the N5 exam.

Kanji list
This list shows only the kanji that the N4 examinee should know.

title: JLPT Guide/JLPT N4 Kanji


text:
Biblical Studies/Christianity/An introduction to denominations

Christians meeting together form a church. Two or more churches joining together to form a common administration and teaching could be considered a denomination.

Denominations formed for various reasons, some for geographically reasons, some for political reasons, and others for differences in interpreting the Bible - that is doctrinal differences.

For discussion purposes these denominations are broken down into four basic groups

Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Protestant, and others.


text:
French/Lessons/Level one

Contents

1

title: French/Lessons/Level one


text:
French/Lessons/Level two

Contents

2

title: French/Lessons/Level two


text:
French/Lessons/Level three

Contents

3

title: French/Lessons/Level three


text:
User:IvanLanin

''I'm from Indonesian Wikipedia. Please see my profile or talk to me there. Thanks!''

title: User:IvanLanin


text:
Movie Making Manual/Los Angeles

Publications
Backstage West

 * When you first arrive in LA, buy a copy of Backstage West so see what is happening on non-union production, including all student films. This magazine is published once a week and sold at most newstands in Hollywood.  It lists all the jobs available that week.  Note:  DramaLogue has merged into Backstage West.  Old guidebooks will mention DramaLogue rather than Backstage West.  DramaLogue was a wonderful publication.  Even if you are not an actor, you should read this regularly so you understand the life of the actor.  Never be without this.  For actors, Backstage West will tell you where to get head shots... which is your next step.

Actor Fest

 * If you are an actor, go to Actor Fest. Run by the people from Backstage West who are appropriately called "Back Stage".

UCLA Extension - Entertainment Studies

 * The UCLA Extension should never be confused with UCLA. Two different organizations, almost same location.  Download the Class Schedule for Entertainment Studies.  While the classes are not as useful as they once were, they are still worth looking at... specially the first night if it is free.

When you become more sophisticated, you need to read:

Variety

 * At one time, there were two semi-independant publications: Daily Variety for people who are Studio Executives and Weekly Variety for people who want to become Studio Executives.  You can sign up for Variety at any of the tradeshows held in the LA area for film... usually for half price.  In the meantime, read it at the library of the Screen Actors Guild.

The Hollywood Reporter

 * This print magazine is an alternative to Variety. I have not tried the on-line magazine.  Variety and Hollywood Reporter have totally different feels to them.  Personal taste decides.

Organizations
Filmmakers Alliance A nonprofit collective providing support and resources to independent filmmakers in Los Angeles.

title: Movie Making Manual/Los Angeles


text:
User talk:155.245.109.12

Please stop. If you continue to blank pages, you will be blocked from editing.

title: User talk:155.245.109.12


text:
User:Ernest no maboroshi

Hello, I am a french user of wikipedia, I don't spend many time on the english version. So if you want to write to me, please do so on this page: |my french talkpage (seems that the link doesn't work, you can still go manually, my nickname is also Ernest_no_maboroshi on the french wikipedia)

title: User:Ernest no maboroshi


text:
User:Boredindenton

Screen Name: Boredindenton Name:       Matthew Age:        20 Major:      Political Science

Interests: Activism!

Email: mow0007@gmail.com

title: User:Boredindenton


text:
Introduction to Indonesian Philosophy

Contents

 * Preface This is a wiki textbook -- feel free to edit it, update it, correct it, and otherwise increase its teaching potential. To find out more about wikis, see Wikipedia's page on wikis.
 * The Inner Faculty of Budi
 * Leluhur as Our First Philosophers

This book has just been merged into the book entitled Introduction to Philosophy. Please feel free to read it there.

title: Introduction to Indonesian Philosophy


text:
French/Lessons/Level one/Test

Test Answers

Verb forms
Name the verb forms for the subject and infinitive specified. (1 point each)

 * parler
 * finir
 * vendre

English to French
Translate the following phrases and sentences into French. (2 points each)

 * I eat an apple.
 * She washes herself.
 * They ski.
 * The house is full of life.
 * The dog jumps to his owner.

French to English
Translate these dialogues into English. (14 points total)

 * Silvia: Bonjour (le bonjour du matin) Joël, j'espère que tu vas bien ?
 * Joel: Oui, bien sûr. Et toi, comment vas-tu ?
 * Silvia: Plus ou moins bien, merci. Alors, qu'est-ce que tu as mangé pour le souper hier soir ?
 * Joel: J'ai mangé des spaghettis avec des boulettes de viande.
 * Silvia: C'était comment ?
 * Joel: C'était vraiment excellent et délicieux. Et toi, tu a mangé quoi hier ?
 * Silvia: Oh, seulement une salade, c'était tellement ennuyeux.
 * Joel: Dommage. Alors, je dois aller au travail, à plus tard !
 * Silvia: Oui, au revoir !

Fill in the blank
Fill in the blanks in these conversations. Note: Every blank is one word. (1 point each)

 * _______-vous ici?
 * Oui, j'etudie ici. ___ nom de ____ ecole est Shri K . H . V . V . Mandir.
 * Quel est votre nom ?
 * Je __________ Raj.
 * Il y a _____ livre.

Matching
Match the French words with their English definitions. (1 point each)

Test

title: French/Lessons/Level one/Test


text:
Introduction to Indonesian Philosophy/Preface

 * "Indonesian Philosophy is generic designation for tradition of abstract speculation held by the people who inhabit the region now known as Indonesia. Indonesian philosophy is expressed in living languages found in Indonesia (approximately 587 languages) and its national language Bahasa Indonesia, comprising many diverse schools of thought receiving influences of Eastern and Western origins, besides its indigenous, original philosophical theme."
 * — Indonesian philosophy

This book introduces some philosophical themes occurring in Indonesian philosophical discussions and discourses. For the last two centuries, the ethnic group philosophies has been studied partially by some Western researchers (especially the Dutch ones). There are Javanese, Buginese, Batak, Minangkabau, or Balinese philosophies to be studied, but there is no effort to integrate them into a certain philosophy named with its regional origin, like what the philosophy historians call 'Western philosophy', 'Indian philosophy', or 'Chinese philosophy'. It has been high time to integrate all the ethnic philosophies into an 'Indonesian philosophy' nowadays. This is what this book engages: it integrates them into a particular philosophy called 'Indonesian philosophy'.

Readers will find it 'amazing' when seeing some elements of Indian, Persian, Arabian, and Western origin in some contents of the Indonesian philosophy, since Indonesian philosophers accept all the influence of the foreign philosophies of the foreign origin without being confused or cultural shock. This is the open-mindedness of Indonesians that make all these live in harmony. Pluralism, besides being the social fact, is the intellectual richness of Indonesia that Indonesians may be proud of.


text:
French/Lessons/Level two/Test answers

Verb Forms
Name the verb forms for the subject and infinitive specified. (1 point each)

English to French
Translate the following phrases and sentences into French. (2 points each)

French to English
Translate these dialogues into English. (14 points total)

Fill in the Blank
Fill in the blanks in these conversations. Note: Every blank is one word. (1 point each)

Matching
Match the French words with their English definitions. (1 point each)

Test answers

title: French/Lessons/Level two/Test answers


text:
French/Lessons/Level one/Test answers

Verb Forms
Name the verb forms for the subject and infinitive specified. (1 point each)

je parle I speak tu parles you speak il/elle/on parle he/she/we speak nous parlons we speaks vous parlez you speak ils/elles parlent they speak

je finis tu finis il/elle finit nous finissons vous finisez ils/elles finissent

English to French
Translate the following phrases and sentences into French. (2 points each)

1. Je mange une pomme. I eat an apple

2. Elle se lave. She do washing

3. Ils font du ski. (Ils skiient) They are doing sking.

4. La maison est pleine de vie. The house is full of life

5. Le chien saute sur son propriétaire.The dog jump on his owner.

French to English
Translate these dialogues into English. (14 points total)

Silvia: Good morning Joel, I hope you're doing well.

Joel: Yes, of course. And you? How are you doing?

Silvia: More or less well. Well, what did you eat for dinner yesterday evening?

Joel: I ate spaghetti and meatballs.

Silvia: How was it?

Joel: It was truly excellent and delicious. And you, what did you eat yesterday?

Silvia: Oh, just a salad. It was fairly boring.

Joel: A shame. Well, I have to go to work. 'Til later!

Silvia: Yes, goodbye!

Fill in the Blank
Fill in the blanks in these conversations. Note: Every blank is one word. (1 point each) ete le l' je m'appelle

un

Matching
Match the French words with their English definitions. (1 point each)

Test answers

title: French/Lessons/Level one/Test answers


text:
French/Lessons/Level two/Test

Test answers

Verb forms
Name the verb forms for the subject and infinitive specified.

English to French
Translate the following phrases and sentences into French.

French to English
Translate these dialogues into English.

Fill in the blank
Fill in the blanks in these conversations. Note: Every blank is one word.

Matching
Match the French words with their English definitions.

Test

title: French/Lessons/Level two/Test


text:
Cookbook:Hot Pepper Sauce

Fiery hot sauces are legion in the Caribbean, and most contain habañeros (Jamaicans call them 'scotch bonnets' for their bell-like shape). A good way to use habañeros is by making up a pepper sauce. Because the heat of individual peppers can vary enormously (even those from the same plant), homogenizing them into a hot sauce makes it easier for you to assess the amount of heat to add to any dish. Use this in sauces, marinades, and stews, or sprinkle sparingly on meats, fish and rice dishes.

Ingredients

 * 16 whole habaneros (seeds and all)
 * 1 oz onion
 * 1 clove garlic
 * 2 tsp sugar
 * 4 Tbsp white malt vinegar (or white wine vinegar)

Procedure

 * 1) Blend all ingredients to whatever consistency you desire.
 * 2) Heat to boiling and simmer for 15–20 minutes.
 * 3) Spoon the cooked sauce into a preheated preserve jar and seal.
 * 4) Leave the jar in a cool, dark place for one month (at least) to develop a good flavour.

Notes, tips, and variations

 * There are many variants on this style of sauce; habanero or scotch bonnets are available in various stages of ripeness, from green through yellow to bright red, so you can control the colour of the sauce by selecting all single colour peppers. The addition of bananas, mangoes and other fruits enjoy an occasional foodie fad.

 * Some recipes involve mixing the type of peppers used; poblanos, jalapeño and chipotle are quite popular varieties. You can achieve widely-varying sauces by altering the ratios of pepper types, so feel free to experiment.

Warnings

 * Always wear latex or household gloves when handling the peppers and avoid touching your eyes. Chilli peppers are an irritant and even a tiny amount in your eyes can cause extreme pain.

title: Cookbook:Hot Pepper Sauce


text:
User:Boreindenton

Hello, my name is Matthew Williams

title: User:Boreindenton


text:
User:Whiteknight/Flex and Yacc

Correct Title:  Lex and Yacc

the Lex and Yacc tools are discussed briefly in the various compiler wikibooks here, but there is no single resource to discuss how to use Lex and Yacc specifically, or even how to apply these tools to a project other then a compiler. I personally am not a huge expert on the use of these tools, but i will peice together this outline as I get more information, and would like to introduce this book by 2007. --Whiteknight (talk) (current) 14:24, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Preface
This book is going to discuss the UNIX tools Lex and Yacc, and variants. While we will be touching on the subjects of lexical analysis and parsing, we will not cover all possible methods nor tools for these tasks. This book is going to focus strictly on Lex, Yacc, and tools which are similar in syntax and operation.

Table of Contents

 * Tools Overview

Lex

 * Lexical Analysis Basics
 * Regular Expressions
 * Lex Input Files
 * Actions
 * Options
 * Versions of Lex

Yacc

 * Parser Basics
 * LALR Parsers
 * Yacc Input Files
 * Options
 * Versions of Yacc

Parser Systems

 * Combining Lex and Yacc

Related Tools

 * Java
 * Perl (Parse::, including Parse::Yapp and Parse::Lex)
 * Python

Resources

 * Regular Expressions
 * Levine, John R.; Mason, Tony; Brown, Doug; "Lex & Yacc", O'Reilly, 1995. ISBN 1565920007

Existing Pages
Lex and Yacc =Lex =Yacc =Parser Systems =Variants
 * Tools Overview
 * Regular Expressions
 * Lexical Analysis Introduction
 * Parsing Introduction
 * Lex Input Files
 * Actions
 * Options
 * LALR Parsers
 * Yacc Input Files
 * Options
 * Combining Lex and Yacc
 * Variants of Lex
 * Variants of Yacc
 * Other Lexical Analyzers
 * Other Parsers

title: User:Whiteknight/Flex and Yacc


text:
User:Schoeberl

At the moment I create a new course Computer Architecture Lab for Wikiversity.

School of Very Small Information Systems was the first course we creted.

My main interest is in Java processor for real-time systems research.

title: User:Schoeberl


text:
General Astronomy/The Scientific Method

The results of scientific thought have played an important role in shaping the world into what it is today. This is true not only because of the influence technology has had in our lives, but also because of the change science has brought to the way we think. Scientific thinking has permeated all aspects of our lives, fundamentally changing the way we see the world. It is science's "way of thinking," the scientific method, that forms its heart. Although "scientific thought" or "science" is sometimes taken to refer to the entire body of scientific theories and knowledge including chemistry, biology, physics, and so on, the term science strictly only refers to the process by which these theories and ideas are examined.

The scientific method is fundamental to the investigation and acquisition of new knowledge based upon physical evidence. Scientists use observations, hypotheses, and logic to propose explanations for natural phenomena in the form of theories. Predictions from these theories that can be reproducibly tested by experiment are the basis for developing new technology.

Although scientific progress is often described as a linear scheme that allows a single scientist to proceed from a state of relative ignorance to a state of knowledge, the scientific method is really much more complicated than this. The scientific method is not a recipe. It requires intelligence and imagination. Science is not the lifeless execution of step-by-step instructions, but a creative and inspired process. Over the past half-century, philosophers, historians, and sociologists of science have established a more complete model describing the ways science is actually practiced.

The modern description of scientific progress gives much more importance to the role of the scientific community. It is impossible for a single person working in isolation to engage in science. This is because of the central role of peer review as a means of correcting error, bias, and self interest. Human nature prevents even a well intentioned scientist from doing anything other than confirming preconceived ideas when working in isolation. Because science is closely tied to a community, progress is usually scattered, proceeding from many stages and different directions at once.

In a new area of scientific exploration, scientific progress is slow at first. Investigators reach out in search of a basic description of how their area of inquiry works. This inquiry is motivated by observations of some interesting phenomena manifested in reality. The observations and experiments undertaken by scientists in a developing field are typically dictated by the scientists' interests and by convenience. The scientists have no heritage of successful experiments and little common ground. Because of this, new pursuits in science lack direction and are wanting of a broad common ground that will unite scientists and prescribe the course of scientific research.

As the new field advances, an underlying set of principles begins to take hold and gain widespread acceptance. These principles become the common ground of scientists in the new field, the basis of a paradigm. With a paradigm in place, researchers no longer need to start from scratch when interpreting the results of new experiments. Instead, they address a specialized audience that works under a common paradigm, and they describe their work in the context of that paradigm. They are no longer unguided in the direction of the work — the paradigm dictates which experiments might be useful in further exploring the questions of their field. An established paradigm is therefore an extremely valuable asset in the pursuit of science.

In the presence of an established paradigm, the normal course of scientific research begins. Scientists seek to clarify the understanding of their area of research by formulating theories grounded in their paradigm and by making relevant observations that test the theories and further clarify the paradigm. The observations give greater insight into the paradigm and test the agreement of theories and paradigms with reality. The theories discern previously unseen details in the paradigm and in nature, and guide the method of new observations.

For the normal course of scientific progress, these methods are extremely efficient. In some cases, however, a scientific discipline might be founded on a paradigm that is fundamentally incorrect. This presents a problem, since the paradigm underlying a discipline is deeply valued by the practitioners in the discipline. Such was the case in astronomy during the scientific revolution of the Renaissance. From the times of Aristotle, it had been thought that the Earth was at the center of the Universe, with everything else moving around it in circles. Eventually, observations of the positions of the planets made Aristotle's model inconsistent with reality. As time passed, it became increasingly difficult to modify Aristotle's paradigm to agree with observations. The prospect of a new and completely different paradigm became ever more attractive, and the new idea of a Sun-centered universe took root.

It is almost always the case that some observations cannot be explained by existing scientific theories, but a gap between knowledge and theory is hardly sufficient to produce a paradigm shift. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn claims that scientific revolution is only possible when the dominant paradigm of a field is in a state of crisis. Only once it becomes apparent that the ideas tied to the paradigm are irreconcilable with observations does it begin to appear sensible to pursue completely new explanations.

When scientists consider theories, either as candidates for a new paradigm or as elaboration for an existing paradigm, they evaluate theories on the basis of a number of criteria that have proven over the years to be relevant indicators of usefulness. These criteria were described by the philosopher of science Karl Popper in his book, The Logic of Scientific Discovery.

The central goal of science is to produce theories that are consistent with reality. Science approaches this goal by testing a theory for validity, and discarding or modifying the theory if observations can't be shown to agree with it. The use of an approach like this requires that theories be falsifiable. In order for a theory to be scientific, it must be relevant to observable aspects of reality. It must be possible, at least in principle, to make observations that would be inconsistent with the logic of the theory. Said otherwise, the theory must make non-trivial predictions that can be tested by a set of observations. If scientists find that a theory's predictions are incorrect, the theory is falsified. A central property of scientific theories is that they can never be proven, but they can eventually be disproved. This fact makes it essential that a theory make specific, useful predictions before it can be examined scientifically.

The need for falsifiability implies a need for theories that make clear predictions. Theories that make strong predictions are said to have a high predictive power. A theory with high predictive power makes bold, clear and testable predictions. Theories with high predictive power are more highly valued in science because they are more easily falsified. Scientists consider theories that have not been falsified despite strong predictions to be more reliable, whereas a theory that makes fewer predictions or less bold predictions tends to be received with more skepticism.

The requirement that scientific theories have strong predictive power leads to the surprising notion that an implausible theory should be preferred over a plausible theory. This is because the claims made by the implausible theory are bolder and more subject to being falsified. In order to succeed, a scientific theory must make a prediction that would not be expected otherwise. If a theory makes a seemingly wild claim that turns out to be correct, the theory is very well supported. This mechanism for developing scientific ideas by creating and testing the predictions of a model is the foundation of science.

A final requirement of scientific theories is that they be as simple as possible while still accurately describing nature. This requirement was famously stated by the English logician and Franciscan friar William of Ockham. He stated the requirement, in Latin, as
 * Numquam ponenda est pluritas sine necessitate,

which translates roughly as
 * Assertions should not be multiplied unnecessarily.

This maxim is widely known as Ockham's Razor. It is a very useful principle, but also one of the most misused doctrines in science.

Ockham's razor warns us that, when two theories make identical predictions, the theory that relies on fewer assumptions is more likely to be correct. The razor is based on the principle that reality is unlikely to conform to our presuppositions. In the absence of evidence, it's often wiser not to speculate.

When creating theories or distinguishing between competing theories, scientists rely on two distinct types of reasoning: inductive reasoning and deductive reasoning.

Inductive reasoning works from the specific to general. It involves making observations and building generalizations on the basis of observations. For instance, you might observe the sunrise every day for a year, and you notice that this Sun rises more or less in the east every time. You might conclude that the Sun always rises in the east. Inductive reasoning involves drawing conclusions from a limited sample of information. You have no way of knowing that the Sun won't rise in the west tomorrow. Still, a pattern will become apparent as observation continues, and year after year of observation makes it compelling to imagine that the Sun must always rise in the east. If the pattern remains very consistent, it can be considered reliable even if the underlying cause isn't obvious. Should a theory ever be presented that predicts that the Sun will always rise in the east, that theory will be well supported. On the other hand, if a theory predicts that the Sun will sometimes rise in the east and sometimes in the west, that theory will be disfavored by the observations even though it isn't disproved in a strict sense. Notice that it is possible, though unlikely, for inductive reasoning to discredit a correct theory or support an incorrect theory. Although it is a powerful and essential tool in science, inductive reasoning must be treated with skepticism when based on a very limited sample of observations.

Deductive reasoning works from the general to the specific. It is based on logical arguments (syllogisms). An example of deductions invented by the author Lewis Carroll is provided below:
 * All lions are fierce.
 * Some lions do not drink coffee.
 * Therefore, some fierce creatures do not drink coffee.

Unlike inductive reasoning, deductive reasoning is perfectly reliable if you have made correct assumptions and applied correct logic. Because deductive reasoning is absolutely reliable when used with good assumptions and proper method, it is easy to place undue trust in claims made on the basis of deductive reasoning. It is important to remember that these claims also require careful examination to check that the assumptions are good and the reasoning is valid. In reality, deductive reasoning is as much subject to error as inductive reasoning. Only the sources of error differ.

title: General Astronomy/The Scientific Method


text:
Orthopaedic Surgery/Office Management

 * ../Business Office/
 * ../Front Office/
 * ../Employees/
 * ../Process Improvement/
 * ../Teamwork/
 * ../Practice Brand Enhancement/
 * ../Dispute Resolution/
 * ../Practice Managers/

title: Orthopaedic Surgery/Office Management


text:
Orthopaedic Surgery/Employees

Employees in a medical office are knowledge workers. Motivation is not limited to pay scale alone but also to job satisfaction and challenge. A knowledge worker may well be more familiar with their job than their manager is. Indeed this knowledge is a commodity which may be in demand and which is portable. incentivizing the recognition and implementation of best practices at the level of the individual employee and employee categories, medical assistants for example, is the goal of management.

Merit raises can be based on three basic criteria upon annual review:

process improvement

team spirit

brand enhancement

Fulfilling the basic job requirements in a timely manner and with an appropriate appearance is expected of any employee. For a knowledge worker, merit implies an application of their innate intelligence toward the improvement of the defining processes of their job. It is the job of management to provide a mechanism by which suggestions on process improvement can be brought to the attention of management by each employee and be considered for implementation, with due credit being given to the employee at the time of annual review. The mechanism for conveying such information should mirror that through which complaints can be raised and resolved through open conference with their fellow managers in instances where conflict between worker and their immediate supervisor seem to warrant arbitration.

For a knowledge worker merit implies an understanding that most achievement is a collective process and individual efforts interlace. Inequalities in effort and capacity are inevitable and some asymmetry in the rewards which accrue to the more spontaneously energetic and gratuitously helpful employee are not to be undermined by expressed resentment. A team spirit builds with helpfulness especially when it is offered without obligation.

The orthopedic practice is a service. Like most service industries the "product" of the enterprise is less tangible than in a manufacturing enterprise. Indeed in medicine, even the most optimal exercise of our most conscientiously applied art and science may not yield a net benefit to the patient. That patient would seemingly be quite justified in seeking care elsewhere if this were all they had to go on. As it happens however with the help of merit worthy front office workers and back offic workers who also interact with patients on the financial aspect of their experience with the practice, the patient who has not met with a favorable result may yet return the next time if they were treated with courtesy and regard, with respect of their privacy and with a timely delivery of service, in which the patient is guided through the transitions from one venue to the next as they are readied for surgery and recovery.

title: Orthopaedic Surgery/Employees


text:
Orthopaedic Surgery/Office staff

 * /Receptionist/
 * /Medical assistant/
 * /Float/
 * /Radiology technician/
 * /Physician's assistant/
 * /Nurse practitioner/

title: Orthopaedic Surgery/Office staff


text:
Windows Programming/Winsock

Winsock is the name of the library in Windows that handles the Berkely Socket API. Technically, this library is not part of the Win32 API, although there are some windows-specific issues that need to be considered when programming a Winsock application.

Making a Winsock Project
You can add Winsock to your programming project by including the  header file. This header file is for the 32-bit version of the library. For the 16-bit version, include the file .

winsock.dll is the 16-bit version of the library, and ws2_32.dll is the 32-bit version. You must instruct your linker to link to the appropriate version of the library.

Initializing Winsock
Before calling any of the Winsock routines, the library must first be initialized by calling the WSAStartup function. This function requires a pointer to the WSADATA structure. You do not need to initialize this structure, because the call to WSAStartup will fill in all the fields of the structure. You may, optionally, read the values from this structure, and use the results in your program. This is not necessary, however. WSAStartup also requires that you specify the version of winsock that you wish to use. The most current version of winsock is version 1.1, although the newest version of the library is version 2.0. To specify this parameter, pass the major and minor versions to the MAKEWORD macro. Here is an example:

WSADATA wd; WSAStartup(MAKEWORD(2, 0), &wd);

Here is the definition of the WSADATA structure. From this data structure, you can determine some important system metrics, including the version of your library, the maximum number of simultaneous sockets available, etc.

typedef struct WSAData { WORD wVersion; WORD wHighVersion; char szDescription[WSADESCRIPTION_LEN+1]; char szSystemStatus[WSASYS_STATUS_LEN+1]; unsigned short iMaxSockets; unsigned short iMaxUdpDg; char FAR* lpVendorInfo; } WSADATA, *LPWSADATA;

The definition of WSAStartup is as follows:

int WSAStartup(WORD wVersionRequested, LPWSADATA lpWSAData);

This function returns zero on success, and will return non-zero on failure. These error codes can be handled, or the program can abort.

Exiting Winsock
After a program has completed, it must call WSACleanup, to unregister itself from the listing, and to free any resources in use by the library. WSACleanup takes no parameters, and returns zero on success. A non-zero return value signifies an error in the cleanup process.

Sockets as Handles
It has been said that unlike UNIX, Win32 does not allow sockets to be read/written using the file I/O functions. This is only partially true. Sockets may not be accessed using the standard-library functions such as fread, fwrite, fprintf, etc. However, if we cast our SOCKET structures to HANDLE structures, we can use the Win32 File I/O API to interface with the sockets. For instance, we can now use ReadFile and WriteFile to write to sockets, and any routines that we have written around these APIs can be used when writing to the network.

Under Win32, do not attempt to cast a SOCKET to a FILE type, and use the stdio.h file functions. This will result in some sort of error (most likely a bad error).

Advanced Win32 Sockets
Win32 has a full complement of socket functions, including bind, accept, socket, listen and recv. However, Win32 also provides a number of advanced function varieties that allow for advanced operation modes. For instance, using the advanced socket functions allow Overlapped I/O mode, asynchronous modes, events, etc. These functions can be explored on MSDN.

title: Windows Programming/Winsock


text:
General Astronomy/The Spectrum

Violet scatters the most, and red the least.

Definition
Spectrum is a word that has taken on a broad meaning in English, first used by scientists such as Isaac Newton in the 1600s to specify the range of colors obtained by passing sunlight through a glass prism, or produce through the natural mechanism of a rainbow. Today it is applied in almost any situation for a broad range of values. Specifically in physics and astronomy it still denotes the range of colors of visible light, but also includes invisible forms of electromagnetic energy ranging from very long wavelength radio waves to the ultra short wavelength gamma radiation.

Producing a Spectrum
Color is analogous to wavelength when we speak of visible light. There are relatively long wavelengths of red light and relatively short wavelengths of blue and violet light. These wavelengths are also indicative of temperature for a heated body; red is cooler while blue is hotter. White light, such as that from the Sun, is not composed of a single color or wavelength, but of a mixture of many colors or wavelengths, which the eye interprets as white.

While all wavelengths of light travel at the same speed through a vacuum, the speed of different wavelengths varies as light passes through a transparent medium such as glass, water or even air. As light passes from one medium (such as air) into another medium (such as glass), its speed changes according to the index of refraction of the two media. In the case of this example, light slows down as it passes into the glass. Blue or violet light is slowed slightly more than red light as it passes from a medium of lower refractive index to one of higher refractive index. This, along with the particular shape of a glass prism, acts to bend or disperse light, spreading the colors out. Since blue light is bent more than red light, the original mixture of light is spread out into its constituent colors to form a spectrum, somewhat like an artificial rainbow.

“The brightness of a star is also dependent on its temperature, and the temperature will have an effect on the spectrum the star emits. If two stars with identical spectra are observed, and the distance of one of the stars through parallax measurement is known, their brightness can be compared. The variance in brightness is attributable to the difference in distance. Using the inverse square law, the distance of the star whose distance was previously unknown can then be determined. Stars can give off radiation not only in the visible spectrum but also as radio waves, x-rays, and gamma rays. All of these different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum can be used in conjunction with the techniques already discussed to make astronomical measurements.”

Types
Spectra types are
 * continuous, which are broad bands created by a incandescent solid (such as the red hot element of an electric stove), liquid (such as molten lava) or a high-pressure gas (such as the surface of a star).
 * emission, characterized by narrow bright lines, created by an excited, low-pressure gas. Examples of emission spectra sources are a comet's coma and tail, and the Rosette nebula.
 * absorption, characterized by narrow dark lines, created by a continuous spectrum that is passed through a low-pressure gas. This is seen in the spectra of the Sun and stars, and is caused by light absorption in the cooler, lower pressure gas atmosphere of the star.

By studying spectra, astronomers can discover many things about stars, most specifically the chemical elements found in the star. “The record of wavelengths (or frequencies) of electromagnetic radiation absorbed by a substance; the absorption spectrum of each pure substance is unique.”

Most stars exhibit absorption line spectra, but a few rare stars show emission lines. Wolf-Rayet stars have emission spectra caused by UV (ultraviolet) radiation from a hot star passed through low-pressure gas. Certain nebulosity or gas clouds also exhibit emission lines. Spectral lines also are detectable in non-visible light such as ultraviolet and microwaves.

title: General Astronomy/The Spectrum


text:
General Astronomy/The Milky Way

The Milky Way is a barred spiral galaxy which forms part of the Local Group. Although the Milky Way is but one of billions of galaxies in the universe, the Galaxy has special significance to humanity as it is the home of the solar system. Democritus (460 BC - 370 BC) was the first known person to claim that the Milky Way consists of distant stars and many planets, including our own.

The term "milky" originates from the hazy band of white light appearing across the celestial sphere visible from Earth, which comprises stars and other material lying within the galactic plane. The galaxy appears brightest in the direction of Sagittarius, towards the galactic center.

Relative to the celestial equator, the Milky Way passes as far north as the constellation of Cassiopeia and as far south as the constellation of Crux, indicating the high inclination of Earth's equatorial plane and the plane of the ecliptic relative to the galactic plane. The fact that the Milky Way divides the night sky into two roughly equal hemispheres indicates that the solar system lies close to the galactic plane.

The Milky Way Galaxy is about 80-100 thousand light years in diameter, about 3,000 light years in thickness, and about 250-300 thousand light years in circumference. It is composed of 200 to 400 billion stars (exact number not yet known). As a guide to the relative physical scale of the Milky Way, if the galaxy were reduced to 130 km (80 mi) in diameter, the solar system would be a mere 2 mm (0.08 in) in width.

The Milky Way's absolute magnitude, which cannot be measured directly, is assumed by astronomical convention to be −20.5.

title: General Astronomy/The Milky Way


text:
General Astronomy/The Kuiper Belt

The Kuiper belt is an area of the solar system extending from the orbit of Neptune (at 30 AU) to 50 AU from the Sun.

The objects within the Kuiper Belt together with the members of the scattered disk extending beyond, are collectively referred to as trans-Neptunian.

The interaction with Neptune (orbital resonance) is thought to be responsible for the apparent edge at 48 AU (a sudden drop in number of objects, see Orbit distribution below) but the current models have yet to explain this peculiar distribution in detail.

Origins
Modern computer simulations show the Kuiper belt to have been strongly influenced by Jupiter and Neptune. During the early period of the Solar System, Neptune's orbit is thought to have migrated outwards from the Sun due to interactions with minor bodies. In the process, Neptune swept up, or gravitationally ejected all the bodies closer to the Sun than about 40 AU (the inner edge of the region occupied by classical Kuiper belt objects), apart from those which fortuitously were in a 2:3 orbital resonance. These resonant bodies formed the plutinos. The present Kuiper Belt members are thought to have largely formed in situ at their present position, although a significant fraction may have originated in the vicinity of Jupiter, and been ejected by it to the far regions of the Solar system.

Hypothesis
The first astronomers to suggest the existence of this belt were Frederick C. Leonard in 1930 and Kenneth E. Edgeworth in 1943. In 1951 Gerard Kuiper suggested that the belt was the source of short period comets (those having an orbital period of less than 200 years). The belt and the objects in it were named after Kuiper after the discovery of (15760) 1992 QB1.

Name
An alternative name, Edgeworth-Kuiper belt is used to credit Edgeworth. The term trans-Neptunian object is recommended for objects in the belt by several scientific groups because the term is less controversial than all others — it is not a synonym though, as TNOs include all objects orbiting the Sun at the outer edge of the solar system, not just those in the Kuiper belt.

Pluto
The object Pluto, formerly considered a planet, is part of the Kuiper Belt. It has an orbital inclination of 17°. Pluto has 5 moons. Charon is the largest moon of Pluto. The other 4 moons are, Nix, Kerberos, Hydra, and Styx.

title: General Astronomy/The Kuiper Belt


text:
User talk:216.12.106.127

Welcome to Wikibooks, collection of open-content textbooks! You don't have to log in to read or edit articles on Wikibooks, but creating an account is quick, free and non-intrusive, requires no personal information, and gives you many benefits, including:
 * The use of a username of your choice
 * The ability to view all your contributions via a "My contributions" link
 * Your own user page
 * Your own talk page which, if you choose, also allows users to send you messages without knowing your e-mail address
 * The use of your own personal watchlist to which you can add articles that interest you
 * The ability to rename pages
 * The ability to upload images
 * The ability to customize the appearance and behavior of the website
 * The eligibility to become an administrator
 * The right to be heard in votes and elections
 * Your IP address will no longer be visible to other users.

We hope that you choose to become a Wikibooks and create an account. We hope you enjoy your time here on Wikibooks as a Wikibookian!

Thanks very much for your contributions in the Astronomy book. You seem to know your stuff. I hope you'll consider writing on a regular basis. As it says above, I'd really encourage you to get a username. --Brian Brondel 22:36, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

title: User talk:216.12.106.127


text:
Choosing The Right File Format/Is there a problem

Is there a problem?
If you are one of the many people who used to use WordPerfect or WordStar and have since switched to a different editor, you may already be familiar with the problem of retrieving your own information from certain types of files. Or perhaps you switched from one operating system to another, from Amiga to Windows, or Windows to Macintosh. Stated simply, file formats for different software far too often leave your information scrambled in a way you cannot decipher again years later.

If this seems a bit theoretical to you then here are some stories to illustrate the issue of choosing the right format for your information.

"The English Tourist"

"A tourist walks into a very nice restaurant in a lovely village in the French countryside and mutters in English 'Are you still serving lunch?' No one reacts, so he says louder, 'Do you have a TABLE where I might DINE?' Recognizing a few words and realizing that the tourist must only speak English or isn't interested in trying his French, one of the employees goes off to find someone who might be able to help this ignorant tourist."

"After a long delay, someone comes, interprets his request and finds him a seat in the restaurant. The tourist is handed a menu. 'I can't read this! It is in French! What are Cervelles anyways?' The helpful interpreter is called back and the tourist has the whole menu explained to him and is finally ready to order a meal. By now our hapless tourist is getting hungry and frustrated and, in just the way everyone gets when they are frustrated and hungry forgets their manners and blurts, 'By the way, I am going to order in English so I can be sure of what I am getting - and for the privilege of taking my order, I demand that you pay the Queen of England a small sum for the use of this language which you should really just learn to use like everyone else!'"

"After this last sentence is finally translated back to the previously friendly proprietors, the kitchen is closed and the tourist is sent packing."

In terms of file formats where this tourist has gone wrong is that although he is happy with the format he is using (unlike the Roman official in the next story) he has forgotten that different people do things differently. When in a different context his preferred format (English) is not supported. This is the situation if your favourite software company goes bust or stops supporting the software you bought. The files which once were so convenient can become useless with time.

"The Roman Official"

"An official in ancient Rome by the name of Gallus hires a scribe called Taruna who understands Latin but can only write in a rare (and unrecorded) dialect of Sanskrit. After Taruna has been in the job for some years Gallus finds he is actually too slow and keeps losing important documents. Taruna is turned out into the street and goes back to his family in disgrace."

"The following day the official employed a highly regarded new assistant and sent him into the archive. A few minutes later the assistant came out in tears explaining that he only knows a few words of Sanskrit, can't find any references to the dialect used and could never hope to make sense of these documents."

Frantically they search for Taruna. When they find him they ask him to come back to work, but he sees their problem. So he says with a smile "I will happily come back to work, you just need to double my pay and holidays!"

In modern terms where the Roman official went wrong is to use an unpublished format (an unrecorded dialect of Sanskrit) to store his information. He was then trapped by this format and forced to keep buying the software (the scribes services) at ever increasing cost. He had lost control of his own information!

In a report written for The National Archives (UK) in 2003, Adrian Brown summarises how to proceed.

"The selection of file formats for creating electronic records should ... be determined not only by the immediate and obvious requirements of the situation, but also by longer-term considerations. An electronic record is not fully fit-for-purpose unless it is sustainable throughout its required life cycle. ... It is therefore highly desirable to identify the minimum set of formats which meet both the active business needs and the sustainability criteria below, and restrict data creation to these formats. (PDF)"

The approach of Project Gutenberg to this challenge has been a strict criteria that all the 15,000+ books stored in their digital repository are stored in plain ASCII text.

"Whenever possible, Project Gutenberg distributes a plain text version of an eBook. Other formats, such as HTML, XML, RTF, and others are also welcome, but plain text is the 'lowest common denominator.' We stress the inclusion of plain text because of its longevity: Project Gutenberg includes numerous text files that are 20-30 years old. In that time, dozens of widely used file formats have come and gone. Text is accessible on all computers, and is also insurance against future obsolescence."

Does that mean we cannot use word processors, if we want long term access to the information in our documents? Well, yes and no. If you want long term file readability (of Latin script languages) as Project Gutenberg does, then ASCII text is the way to go. This might be something to consider for financial records and other valuable information. If, as many people do, you have non-text information, like images and sounds, then this is the article to read. Either way there are a lot of common errors you can avoid which will at the very least make future migrations to the next generation of file formats much easier.

Let's now take a real world scenario. Many people use the Microsoft Windows operating system and the Microsoft Office package which includes the document application Microsoft Word (or just MSWord). The default file format of MSWord is DOC. So what's DOC like for long term storage?

MS Word is a proprietary program and the .doc file extension is a proprietary format. That means that how the software works and stores your information is secret - only Microsoft knows exactly how it all works.


text:
Choosing The Right File Format/Formats

Formats for storing electronic information
At any one time there is an enormous variety of file formats in use for various purposes, so how do you choose which one is best? There are three type of file formats:
 * Proprietary, closed specifications
 * Proprietary, open specifications
 * Non-proprietary, open specifications

Proprietary, closed specifications are used by some of the most common software, if you don't use them yourself you probably get sent them. However because these formats are not publically documented, you are held hostage to the company making the software. If they decide not to support old versions of their own format, suddenly you can't open your old files! Then your choice of software is greatly dependent on any new software ability to second-guess the format used by your old software. Examples of this type of format are those from the Microsoft Office Word doc format and Excels xls format, and Adobe Photoshop's Document (.psd).

Proprietary, open specifications are somewhat better in that although the format is still legally owned and developed purely for their commercial benefit by one company, they have undertaken to document the format openly. They can still choose to switch back to a closed specification, or they may make changes they choose not to document. In other words, a proprietary open specification is only open as long as the company wants to keep it that way. Examples of this type of format are Adobe's Portable Document Format (.pdf) (patented, although most of the patents are licensed on a royalty-free basis), Adobe TIFF format (.tiff) and Macromedia Shockwave Flash (.swf) (however, the documentation is under a non-disclosure agreement that requires readers not to contribute to any other implementations of Flash, so in practice it is still closed).

Non-proprietary, open specifications have been openly documented by some public body (or released to them) by developers. Once released these formats have a guaranteed reference point. Examples of this type of format are Portable Network graphic (.png) Joint Photographic Expert Group (.jpg / .jpeg) ( .mpeg2), eXtensible Markup Language (.xml) (the structure, more than the specific format), and Scalable Vector Graphic (.svg).

One special case is the Adobe Portable Document Format for archival (pdf-archive or PDF-A), a restricted application of the proprietary open specification PDF 1.4 format. It is a published ISO International Standard from 2002 and developed by the PDF-Archive Committee in close partnership with the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. I have not found any software which supports this format, so it is possibly only used in organisations where archival is their main concern.

One family of formats which could solve many issues is collectively called OpenDocument developed by OpenOffice.org, OASIS, and many others in the industry (but not Microsoft). OpenOffice.org 2.0, recently released, uses the OpenDocument family of formats. Of the software supporting OpenDocument, OpenOffice, AbiWord and Google Docs are cross-platform, and KOffice will be as of KDE 4.1 (around July 2008). Mac OS X 10.5's TextEdit can understand the format to some degree, and Microsoft states it will add native support for OpenDocument 1.1 (rather than plug-in converters) to MS Office, as of Spring 2009.

Unfortunately leading software often defaults to a format which is inherently unsuited to later retrieval. An example is Microsoft Word which defaults to their native .doc format rather than the better documented and more widely supported Rich Text Format (.rtf), Though you can change the default format. Microsoft products are also notable for their use of what Marshall Masters of the Independent Book Publishers Association calls 'upgrade blackmail' and describes as "Someone with a new version of your desktop application edits your file, and now your older version of the application cannot read it, which forces you to pay for an expensive upgrade if you want to continue working and playing well with others." That's definitely something for anyone with a budget to avoid.

So, what's the next level of future-proofing? Read on...

Criteria in choosing future proof file formats
Formats for future proofing must:
 * Be supported by comprehensively, public documentation
 * Be stable, not under constant revision
 * Be supported by several software providers
 * Be supported on various hardware
 * Be supported by software on various operating systems (Windows/Macintosh/Unix/Linux)
 * Be free of legal restriction in its use (see PNG not GIF)

Additional consideration:
 * Popular formats are more likely to remain supported

Criteria in choosing suitable software
There are some software implications of the format criteria. Not all software uses open specifications correctly, so they only appear to be using a particular format. This is most common with Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML) editors and the notorious 'Save as html' option in Microsoft Word. So if you are buying software, make sure to check this. Open Source/ Free inherently tends to have strong support for open standards.

title: Choosing The Right File Format/Formats


text:
Choosing The Right File Format/Text Documents

Text & Documents
In most types of organisations text documents are their most important type of electronic information after financial accounts. Depending on what the document contains there are several types of format to choose from.

There are three types of text documents: Plain text files - simple text, no formatting, no font choices. Text documents - you can choose fonts, colors, text size, backgrounds and imbed images (sounds/video etc.). Documents for presentation - all the options of Text documents, with restrictions on further editing.

For Plain text files the simplest, and most durable format is ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange). It has been developed since 1963 and must be the single most supported format ever. However it is also very limited. The only formatting available is the selection of line breaks. There is no embedding of any images or colors, and there is no support for diacritic marks or non-Latin scripts. There are a variety of other encodings based on ASCII which add support for more characters. In the western world windows-1252 (which is closely related to ISO-8859-1) is the most common of these. Other parts of the world will have other conventions. UTF-8, which can represent texts of all languages in real use, is becoming more common and may be the best choice for long term storage of text.

Text files using an encoding based on ASCII are usually represented with the .txt suffix, but it can be hard to determine which one automatically. So it is a good idea to try and find out what encoding you are using and record it. If you are really paranoid you may also want to find and store the authoritative tables for converting that encoding to unicode (try http://www.iana.org/assignments/character-sets and http://www.unicode.org/Public/MAPPINGS/).

For Windows users, Notepad is the default application for handling TXT files. Current versions of notepad assume UTF-8 if the file is completely valid UTF-8 or has a UTF-8 byte order mark, UTF-16 if they detect a UTF-16 byte order mark and the windows ANSI code page (1252 for western versions) otherwise. In a pinch it is often possible to use notepad and similar editors to get the raw text out of other types of files, and it can be informative to try this on other files you plan to store.

Text documents are what you produce most of the time on one of the many commercial or free word processors. Most of the time you probably use it for writing basic text documents. Letters to friends and colleagues, project lists and so on. Applications for this type of text are found in popular office suites like Microsoft Office, AppleWorks and OpenOffice.org.

For the purpose of durability of your documents it is important that the document you write today will still be readable next year. For a long time there has been no open standard for documents, so compatibility has been a constant problem. People have had different levels of success when they've chosen to migrate from one document editor to another, as each used its own format. The .doc format is now well supported by several editors.

Whichever word processor you use, it should support several formats, choosing the most durable format is very important. While work proceeds on the OpenDocument standard (Version 1.0 was approved as an OASIS standard in May 2005), RTF (Rich Text Format) is the most widely supported and documented format available. You should be able to make this your default format so all future documents are in the RTF format. (Tutorial on changing the default format in Microsoft Word) If you choose not to do this because RTF does not support some feature you need, you should still consider using RTF as you archival format. Your formatting may not be represented correctly, but at least your content is there for posterity.

If you spend time making Documents for presentation you'll know that Word processors are limited in this area. You might be using programs like Adobe Illustrator/InDesign, sodipodi or CorelDRAW. These programs are great, but they can be tricky to successfully archive.

There are at least two competing options, PDF especially PDF/A from Adobe and XPS from Microsoft.

''The Portable Document Format (PDF) is the file format created by Adobe Systems in 1993 for document exchange. PDF is a fixed-layout format used for representing two-dimensional documents in a manner independent of the application software, hardware, and operating system. Each PDF file encapsulates a complete description of a 2-D document (and, with Acrobat 3-D, embedded 3-D documents) that includes the text, fonts, images, and 2-D vector graphics that compose the documents. PDF is an open standard that has been officially published on July 1, 2008 by the ISO as ISO 32000-1:2008.'' "The Portable Document Format (PDF)" Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia, accessed July 4, 2008

PDF/A is described in ISO 19005-1:2005 Document Management - Electronic document file format for long term preservation - Part 1: Use of PDF 1.4 (PDF/A-1)'' that was published on October 1, 2005. This standard defines a format (PDF/A) for the long-term archiving of electronic documents and is based on the PDF Reference Version 1.4 from Adobe Systems Inc. (implemented in Adobe Acrobat 5). PDF/A is in fact a subset of PDF, leaving out PDF features not suited to long-term archiving. This is similar to the definition of the PDF/X subset for the printing and graphic arts.'' "PDF/A" Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia, accessed July 4, 2008

''The XML Paper Specification (XPS), formerly codenamed "Metro", is a specification for a page description language and a fixed-document format developed by Microsoft. It is an XML-based (more precisely XAML-based) specification, based on a new print path and a color-managed vector-based document format which supports device independence and resolution independence.'' "The XML Paper Specification (XPS)" Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia, accessed July 4, 2008

One word of caution for using PDF files: do not use inbuilt compression of pdf files and if possible use the PDF 1.4 specification.

Recommendation
 * Use plain ASCII text whenever possible
 * Use ODT where formatting is important or where graphics need to be included
 * Use PDF or XPS for documents which will not need to be edited in the future

References
 * OpenDocument in Wikipedia


text:
Choosing The Right File Format/Web Pages

Web pages
Producing (X)HTML files can be done with a wide variety of software, and in general web browser are very forgiving of errors in HTML code. In most cases it would still be unwise to use office applications for creating (X)HTML documents. Although some office software applications are now quite good at generating clean (uncluttered) code, there are always some mistakes. Never under any circumstances use Microsoft Word's "Save as HTML function". The code that will be produced is full of non-standard, Microsoft-specific extensions, and the files it produces are very large.

The advantage of (X)HTML is that it can always be read with your eye, whether you have a suitable browser or not. For example, the title of an HTML page (if you look at the code of the file) is surrounded by  and   so it looks like this:

A page about me

This makes (X)HTML ideal for storing text files with structure. You are however limited by your ability to create (X)HTML files and (X)HTML's limitations on formatting

Recommendation
 * Set the DTD and (X)HTML flavour your software uses before starting a new file
 * Validate your code with W3C's online validator: http://validator.w3.org/
 * Group or compress the (X)HTML and CSS files together in a folder so they do not become separated

References
 * World Wide Web Consortium: http://www.w3.org/


text:
Choosing The Right File Format/Raster Images

Images (Raster Graphics)
Most of your images are probably raster graphics, as vector graphics are less common. Although there are hundreds of formats to choose from two of the most popular are GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) and TIFF (Tagged Image File Format). Unfortunately these have been caught up in legal issues since 1994 over a Unisys patent on the LZW compression algorithm which both formats use. These patents have now expired although there is still an IBM patent valid until August 2006.

Thus the GIF and TIFF formats do not currently meet the requirement of being 'free from legal restriction in their use'.

The lossless PNG (Portable Network Graphic) format replaces GIF and has many advantages in quality, size and options (but lacks animation). Most importantly the PNG format is patent free and has been a W3C Recommendation and ISO Standard since 2003.

Another popular format for raster graphics is the lossy JPEG/JPG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) format, which is specially suited to storing photographic images.

"...the JPEG committee have always tried to ensure in their standardisation work that the 'baseline' part of their standards should be implementable without payment of either royalty fees (volume related) or license fees (non-volume related).' JPEG Committee"

"...there are many patents associated with some optional features of JPEG, namely arithmetic coding and hierarchical storage. For this reason, these optional features should not be used for long-term storage of valuable images. W3C"

Remember that JPEG is a lossy format, meaning that each time the image is modified and resaved there is some irretrievable data loss. Therefore it should be avoided for archival use unless shortage of space requires that lossy compression is used.

(Windows users should read Microsoft Security Bulletin MS04-028 and this press release)

Recommendation

 * Use the PNG format.
 * Use the JPEG format, but avoid optional features.
 * If your software supports it, you can save in TIFF format without compression.


text:
Choosing The Right File Format/Vector Graphics

Single layer images
Another application of 2D vector graphics are for images where the image itself is the final product. Commercial products doing this are Adobe Illustrator and Macromedia Flash.

Adobe uses their proprietary format AI (standing for 'Adobe Illustrator', one of their products.) Movement is being made on a platform and product independent format called SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics). The SVG format has much of the functionality of Macromedia's SWF format plus many others, including the ability to be searched for text by search engines. Although at the time of writing this article SVG was not a mainstream format, its use is growing and it seems likely to become a standard in wide use [2]. Development of the SVG format are carried out by the W3C and at present SVG version 1.0 is a W3C Recommendation.

Multiple layer images
For print shops and graphic designer it is often necessary to store the original working files. These may contain many layers of different images, as well as some record of previous changes made to the file.

The main players in this field are the PhotoShop Document (.psd) format and Corel PhotoPaint. The main OpenSource rival is GIMP Image File (.xcf) format. Because Gimp is an open source application the potential for its format becoming unreadable is low, however the two applications should not really be directly be compared.

TODO: Research availability and licensing of .psd and .xcf format specifications

Adobe Acrobat Reader includes support for SVG, Adobe also has a standalone SVG viewer which can be imbedded easily into internet explorer browsers.

Recommendation
 * Do not use vector graphics to store important information unless unavoidable.
 * Keep original files on CD with copies in SVG format. Keep paper copies.

Recommendation

References


text:
Choosing The Right File Format/Database Spreadsheet

Databases & Spreadsheets
Databases are inherently good for long term storage of information. Because of the way they are constructed it is generally easy to extract information and reform it for restorage.

The backbone of standards compliant databases is Structured Query Language (SQL). SQL is not a format for storing database information. It is a format for storing the requests made to a database. In other words a database stores your information and SQL is the language for retrieving that information.

For a long time SQL was being developed in different places by different people and for some time the 1999 version has therefore been widely used as a safe bet. Now SQL:2003 is an ISO/IEC standard and very wisely there are "No changes or conformance requirements - Products conforming to Core SQL:1999 should conform automatically to SQL:2003".

Part of the beauty of the SQL standard is that you can extract your information together with the structural information needed to put that information into another database. The resulting file is often called an 'SQL dump'.

Recommendations
 * Do not use MS Access, it is not a fully functional RDBMS and does not support standards compliant SQL queries.
 * Use a database which can import and export/dump in SQL
 * Check that your SQL is standard SQL:1999 or SQL:2003
 * Backup the information in your database regularly as a TXT file or SQL file

References:
 * Migrating from Microsoft Access to MySQL
 * SQL: The Standard and the Language
 * Databases in the Open Directory Project
 * SQL:1999 validators
 * SQL:2003 validator
 * "Library of Congress: Recommended Digital Formats for Datasets and Databases".


text:
Choosing The Right File Format/Vector Files

Understanding Vector Formats
Vector Formats represent shapes by describing their geometric properties in points, lines, curves, and polygons. It follows mathematic calculation and commands to render a graphics. The difference between vector and raster images, and when to use each, is important, but outside the scope of this document.

Sadly there are no widely adopted standard formats for vector images. Part of the reason for this is the variety of uses for vector images. At one extreme of complexity is a DWG (pronounced drawing) file from AutoCAD which can represent a multi storey building in three dimensions. At the other extreme is an SVG (Structured Vector Graphics) file for the elegant graphics used in digital cartoons.

So which format one uses depends a lot on how long you will need the information to be stored and who will need to have access to it.

As a starting point here are some vector formats and things to consider:

In 2001, the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format became a W3 recommended standard.

DOT files are a very compact graph description that can be read and written by many applications.

Dia ".dia" files are resolution-independent vector format for diagrams and schematics.


text:
Choosing The Right File Format/CAD

=Vector files (2D & 3D scalable line drawings)=

Vector files present special challenges partly because they are used for everything from 3 dimensional models of aircraft to scalable desktop icons. So to talk about one format for all the different uses would be misleading. Instead we'll break vector file formats down by their purpose.

3 Dimensional models
3D computer graphics can model or represent almost anything found in the physical world, and much more. Because of the variety of uses progress has been slow on adopting standard formats for exchanging and storing data. Many good programs can import and export in several propriety formats, although the quality of the resulting file can be suspect because in many cases developers have had to experiment and guess their way into how the external format works.

In the fields of architecture, engineering and building, some formats (and families of formats) have begun to emerge as contenders for the role of an industry-wide standards. One such format (are there others?) is the Industry Foundation Classes format (IFC) which is now compulsory for state supported building projects in Denmark and many state supported Finnish projects ref.

Until the adoption of Object Class formats like IFC, the main contenders for being called a standard are the proprietary but open Drawing Exchange Format (DXF) from AutoDesk and the W3C recommendation Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML).

Because the use of AutoCAD (an AutoDesk product) is so widespread there has been a very successful attempt at supporting their format in other products. The Open Design Alliance has produced the commercially licensed OpenDWG (DWG format) as a format compatible with AutoCADs own DWG format. Many competitors of AutoCAD now offer support for DWG via this format.

The OpenSource 3D modeling application Blender can export in both DXF and VRML.

2 Dimensional drawings
Two-dimensional vector graphic formats can be divided into two groups. Commercial products like AutoCAD and ArchiCAD use 2D (and 3D) vector information to make highly advanced, multiple layered drawings for architects and engineers.

In the graphics and to some extent the animation industry, formats like the proprietary Flash format and the open source standard SVG are popular. Many Adobe programs use a variety of formats which could well be very good working files in the parent program, but can be a problem to open later when, especially when a copy of that program is no longer available.

(this section needs expansion)

Recommendations

 * 3 Dimensional Models: Keep the original working file and make a copies in the DXF (to protect metadata) and VRML (to secure visual elements) formats.
 * 2 Dimensional Drawings: Keep the original working file and make a copy in the DXF format or SVG format depending on which is best suited.

title: Choosing The Right File Format/CAD


text:
User:RoseW.

My name is Rose Williams, and I am a school-teacher from Kansas City, Missouri. I look forward to creating informational modules in Wikibooks.

title: User:RoseW.


text:
Greek Mythology/Minor Gods/Fates

The Moirae, or Fates, are three old women who are charged with the destinies of all living beings, including heroes and heroines, and these destinies were represented by a string. They were called Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos.

Clotho would spin the string that represented the life of a living being; Lachesis would measure its length to determine the length of that being's life, and Atropos, the eldest, would cut it when the time was right, thus ending with that being's life.

These three goddesses were thought to be the daughters of Zeus and Themis. This is debatable however. Even some deities were afraid of the Fates. The women might have even been more powerful than Zeus himself. These goddesses appear in many myths such as Perseus, in which they are tricked.

title: Greek Mythology/Minor Gods/Fates


text:
User:Ardric47

I mostly work on Wikipedia as Ardric47.

title: User:Ardric47


text:
Talk:Microeconomics/Perfect Competition

The section on "diminishing returns" in fact discusses the calculation of marginal cost. Diminishing returns is best understood by examining "marginal product" associating the unit of input (capital or labor) with a particular amount of output. The best explanation starts with a fixed amount of money to invest. The money is split between capital and labor. For example, the more capital that is purchased, the less labor that can be hired. Each combination of capital and labor produces a particular level of output. The optimum combination occurs where marginal product of labor is the same as marginal product of capital. Moving away from that intersection decreases the marginal product of one of the two inputs. For example, adding more labor causes less spending on capital equipment. Not only that, the increment of labor added is less efficient than the previous amount of labor. Thus, the solution to the problem of how much to produce (for a given amount of money to invest) occurs where the marginal product of labor is the same as the marginal product of capital. All other solutions are non-optimal. This information can then be translated into cost and output. That function can be differentiated by the labor and capital variables to determine "marginal cost of labor" and "marginal cost of capital" discussed elsewhere.

title: Talk:Microeconomics/Perfect Competition


text:
Orthopaedic Surgery/Disorders of The Rotator Cuff

With age the normal elasticity of tendons is diminished. Signal change on MRI correlates with this age related change which is considered pathological when it occurs in the extreme or prematurely. Mechanically, the altered tissue is stiffer. Injury is most likely to occur where the muscle is functioning in an eccentric mode, lengthening of the muscle tendon unit, while the muscle contracts as in the late follow through phase of throwing in which the cuff contributes to the coordinated deceleration of the arm. The greater stiffness of the elastin depleted tendon leads to failure. The elastin normally functions like a snubber on a mooring line which dampens the sudden jolt as the structure of the rope reaches the limit of it's ability to stretch. The location of the failure varies with rate of load. Episodic near failure at the tuberosity may result in remodeling changes at the tendon bone interface as an adaptive response to shore up the tendon insertion. Rotator cuff tears can occur through normal tendon with an acute injury of sufficient force and mechanism. In most cases however the pathophysiology is more complex and tears generally are found to have occurred through tendon that is not normal but rather through tendon that has deteriorated for lack of a better term. A degenerative process is another term that we use to describe the changes in the structure of the tendon that are present and which predispose to the development of a tear. These changes in the tendon can be accompanied by pain but may also be clinically silent thus despite a lack of reported symptoms after age 50 the likelihood of identifying a rotator cuff tear in a random individual is roughly 20% at age 50 and 40% at age 70. It has been a natural presumption that a small asymptomatic tear can develop into a larger symptomatic tear and that over the course of this evolution the degree of difficulty in repair is increased due to the retraction of the muscle tendon unit. Furthermore long established tears in the tendon can be accompanied by atrophy and fatty infiltration of the muscles at which point simply reestablishing the physical connection between the tendon and the bone will not necessarily restore the functional role of the structure in the overall kinematics and biomechanics of the shoulder. It is further apparent that the tendon connection to bone that results from repair of a rotator cuff differs from that of a normal tendon insertion. One feature that is lacking in the repaired tendon are Sharpies fibers which in a normal tendon anchor into the structure of the bone imparting greater resistance to tear. Lacking this feature therefore a repaired tendon is more subject to retear although as the results tally it may be possible to have successfully alleviated the complaint despite evidence on post operative imaging that the tendon has either failed to heal, or has retorn.

The net benefit that is seen in 85% of rotator cuff repairs however suggests that a successful repair is not incompatible with a residual tendon defect. On net then with our present techniques we can hope at least to convert a symptomatic tear into an asymptomatic tear. Since we know by recent studies that a small tear need not progress this may nonetheless be an favorable outcome which is sustained. It is possible that a residual tear in the watershed zone at the junction of the supraspinatus and infraspinatus where many asymptomatic rotator cuffs are noted to occur at inconsequential to the result and represent the majority of residual tears that are asymptomatic. Despite this hope we are driven to improve our results by restoring anatomy and function. One strategy is to improve tendon fixation strength to the point where early motion is feasible. If we can justifiably extrapolate from the experience of tendon repair in the hand, a post operative environment that allows some degree of controlled active motion is optimum for healing if gaps can be prevented in the repair interface. Thusfar the predominant practice following rotator cuff repair is for no motion or very limited motion designed to be passive characterize the rehabilitation protocols following rotator cuff repair. This approach presumes that the frequency of residual defects are due to repair failure and that this results more frequently when motion is allowed. It seems as though our present methods of fixation as varied as they may be between double row and single row repairs arthroscopic or open, we have optimized the strength of fixation and it is insufficient to allow unsupervised active motion. The second strategy that is being pursued is to augment the healing process with biological adjuncts to stimulate and speed the process of healing if not to qualitatively improve the healing to better reiterate the ultrastucture of the normal tendon insertion. The possibility of one day augmenting the repair process is suggested by animal studies which show a promising effect of FGF-2 which stimulates fibroblasts. Impregnated in suture this has been shown to augment tendon healing and improve motion following flexor tendon repair in the hand. In has also been show to promote the development of sharpies fibers in some experimental models, thus this represents a promising line of future research. Early clinical efforts using PRP which contains a variety of growth factors are thusfar on no demonstrable benefit when applied within a collagen carrier to augment rotator cuss repair. The potential however is there and the devil as usual is in the details. Other pharmacological interventions are of course promising including smoking sessation, avoidance of NSAIDs and the potential that doxycycline as a MMP inhibitor thereby moderating breakdown of nascent neotendon perhaps permitting more productive healing. The latter incidentally is a suitable antibiotic against P Acne which has a predilection to produce infection especially around the shoulder.

Whether through failure of through periodic contractile inhibition secondary to pain, the rotator cuff becomes functionally insufficient even before failure of its substance leads to a loss to the normal head centering function with glenohumeral abduction. Eventually there is cephalad migration under the influence of the deltoid. The acromion and AC ligament receive compressive loads and adaptive changes occur leading to thickening of the anterior inferior acromion and ossification of the AC ligament. This abnormal boney structure then creates a secondary mode of injury by abrading the dorsal surface of the tendon acting like a wood plane. Osteophytes at the inferior surface of the A-C joint have a similar effect contributing to the process of outlet impingement. As part of the procedure for repairing the rotator cuff tear then measures are required to alter the potential for extrinsic abrasion by adjacent bony structures even if they are not as previously thought always the cause for the original tear. The bony changes that occur secondary to the tear and the altered biomechanics do however present a threat to the integrity of the repair if they abrade the structure of the healing tendon. These spurs can occur anteriorly through ossification of the coracoacromial ligament with a resultant anterior inferior prominence of the acromion, which in some cases is already curved downward anteriorly. The spurs that form inferiorly at the acromioclavicular joint also potentially threaten the integrity of the repaired supraspinatus which must glide beneath this joint in the course of active shoulder motion. Failing to address these spurs but resection of the distal 8mm or so of clavicle can presumably contribute to retear. Certainly the persistence of shoulder pain following rotator cuff repair is often found to be due to AC joint arthritis which has not been addressed at the primary surgery. Indeed it seems that this pain and subsequent response to subsequent distal clavicle resection is not necessarily evident as a feature of the chief complaint. This may be due to the pain limited motion at the time of initial presentation, if may also be that the repaired tendon being bulkier is more subject to the abrading effect of the AC joint spurs, thus a relatively low threshold for concomitant resection of the distal clavicle is warranted especially if there is evidence of superior impingement on the rotator cuff by inferiory protruding osteophytes.

Rotator cuff injury in the throwing athelete has a different mechanism. The throwing athelete may develop excessive external rotion and a restricted internal rotation as a consequence of mechanical stresses on the shoulder capsule which occur with the throwing motion. The anterior capsule stretches in late cocking phase and the posterior capsule stretches in follow.

The loss of elasticity of tendons happens by an unknown mechanism. An abnormal pattern of remodeling with the rotator cuff tendon appears to be the net effect of an altered gene expression triggered by the extreme mechanical demands. Abnormally high levels of metalloproteinases implying altered collagen processing are noted in assays of torn rotator cuffs.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&dopt=Citation&list_uids=16140812 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19393930


text:
French/Lessons/Vacations

There are three versions of the future tense in French, the futur simple, the futur composé, and the futur antérieur (future perfect). One uses the future simple tense when referring to an action, certain to occur, in a time ahead of now.

Regular formation
To conjugate a verb in the simple future, one takes the infinitive and appends the right form of avoir, except for nous and vous which takes -ons and -ez:

Cities
is used to say in, at, or to:

is used to say from:

Feminine areas
is used to say in, at, or to for feminine geographical areas except cities:

is used to say from for feminine geographical areas:

Masculine areas
is used to say in, at, or to for masculine regions, provinces, and states:

is used to say in, at, or to for masculine countries beginning with a consonant:

is used to say in, at, or to for masculine countries beginning with a vowel:

is used to say from for masculine geographical areas beginning with a consonant:

is used to say from for masculine countries beginning with a vowel:

Plural countries
is used to say in, at, or to if a plural article is part of the name of a country:

is used to say from if a plural article is part of the name of a country:

Nationalities are not capitalized as often in French as they are in English. If you are referring to a person, as in an Arab person or a Chinese person, the French equivalent is un Arabe or un Chinois. However, if you are referring to the Arabic language or Chinese language, the French would not capitalize: l'arabe, le chinois. If the nationality is used as an adjective, it is normally left uncapitalized: un livre chinois, un tapis arabe.

title: French/Lessons/Vacations