Chapter 33

Section 1

1. The Aborigines and Maori were the major indigenous groups of people in Australia and New Zealand.

2. In the more rural areas of Australia and New Zealand, people may have to communicate through radio or mail for teaching instructions and other things of that nature. Indigenous tribes suffer from mistreatment of the modern age and also from more mundane things, such as malnutrition and poverty.

Creative Writing: Europeans discovered Australia when exploring the South Pacific region, and in later years it became an island of convicts from overcrowded British prison. In the mid 1800s, the British started to forcibly remove the indigenous people from New Zealand and Australia, causing the native people to fight back, but lose in the long run.

Section 2

1. The everyday life of the people of Oceania reflects cultural diversity from the clothes that the people of those nations were to the sports that they play because it is all a mix of several different nations' way of going through life.

2. Through several conflicts with disease, cultural differences, territory battles, and the World Wars, the Europeans lead several adverse effects upon Oceania.

Creative Writing: As I floated along Papua New Guinea, I began to realize the vast cultural differences between them and Americans. With their innumerable amounts of ill educated citizens, their economy has plummeted, along with their standards of living. Even from the coast, I can see the effects of the poor economy, and yet I envy them. Without money being a constant threat in their lives, as they know that they are destitute, they are allowed to focus on other things, such as family and tradition.

Chapter 31

Section 1

1. Rice farming is an important agricultural activity in Southeast Asia because it is a staple food and it is the top export of two of the countries in that region, Thailand and Vietnam.

2. The countries of Southeast Asia are industrializing at different rates because the have different products to offer other countries, and because some countries came out of the economic crisis of the 1980s more quickly than others.

Creative Writing: With the help of the Asian Development Bank and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Southeastern countries are quickly weaving themselves into economic interdependence. These organizations promote trade between all countries of the region and make trade much more valuable and worth while for those involved.

Section 2

1. Floods and typhoons kill hundreds of people and ruin millions of dollars of crops every year for the Southeast Asian region. Volcanic eruptions kill hundreds of people and destroy homes, along with blowing gases into the air that affect weather patterns around the world.

2. Economic progression has lead to pollution of land, water, and air, from urban and rural environments and from industrialization.

Creative Writing: While there are man-made issues that need to be dealt with, natural disasters are reeking havoc upon the Southeast Asian region. Typhoons, cyclones, eruptions, and floods cause millions of dollars in damage, as well as deprive us of crops and human lives. Without precautions made to protect ourselves from these disasters, these same effects will be drawn from these problems.

Chapter 29

Section 1

1. Cordilleras and archipelagoes make up most of the South Eastern Asian region.

2. The rich natural resources of the region help bring the economies of the countries up.

Creative Writing: Southeast Asia depends on its waterways because several farms are more inland. These waterways allow water to get into massive farms of rice, plants, other crops, and simple drinking water.

Section 2

1. Islands of Southeast Asia generally have a subtropical climate, while the mainland have tropical dry and subtropical climates.

2. The main climate types of this region are tropical wet and tropical dry.

Creative Writing: I can understand why urbanization of this area may be important to the people around it, however, our planet is already destroying much of its biodiversity and can afford to lose much more. As we cut down rainforests, we are destroying the homes of millions of creatures, as the rainforests are one of the most biodiverse areas in the world. If we continue to destroy these homes, we will move more species closer and closer to extinction.

Chapter 28

Section 1

1. In East Asia, China and North Korea are communist, while South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan are democratic. Because of this, China and North Korea have command economies, and South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan have mixed economies and market economies.

2.The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation plays an important role in the economic activities of the East Asian region as it makes trade among China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan efficient and fair.

Creative Writing: It was a very good idea to have let China into the World Trade Organization on the United States' part. China may have had some critisism for past anti-humanitarian actions, that were used in order to stop citizens from speaking out against the government, but these actions can help keep workers in line and focused so that the world wide economy can increase.

Section 2

1. Industrialization of the East Asian region lead to nuclear power, and nuclear accidents like in 1999 in Japan. It has also lead to acid rain, deforestation, desertification and other forms of pollution.

2. East Asian countries naturally recieve many earthquakes and typhoons. Japan alone also has over 80 active volcanoes.

Creative Writing: Japan, since the 1970's has encouraged the stopping of pollution of industries and is now the leader of addressing environmental issues. In 2006, Japan was ahead of all other auto manufacturers in developing fuel cell engines that produced no emissions. Japan has also made aquacultures so that over fishing does not occur.

Chapter 27

Section 1

1. East Asia's culture and traditions originated from the ancient indigenous ancestors of that region.

2. The people of China mainly speak dialects of Mandarin.

Creative Writing: Before communism in China, people were free to practice the religions that they pleased. Most people were Confucist, Buddhist, or Taoist/Daoist. However, today the Chinese Communist government discourages anything other than atheism, and some restrictions are placed upon people that follow some religions, such as the fact that if a Tibetan is found owning a picture of the Dalai Lama, he risks arrest.

Section 2

1. Most Japanese people are located near the urban areas in valleys and coastal regions due to forested mountains covering a large area of Japan.

2. Japan built an empire from the 1890s to the 1940s through military force and diplomacy, mostly gaining land through wars with the Chinese and the Russians.

Creative Writing: Japan has been touched in several ways from the outside world and those small touches have caused large changes in Japan's culture. After the fall of the Japanese Empire after World War Two, Japan became a democracy, sharing the type of government that many nations in the world are controlled by today. Japanese language, too, has been modified by western influences and Chinese influences as well.

Section 3

1. Because Western diplomats came to visit Korea first with military force, Korea closed its doors to them and became an isolated nation.

2. Korean life is largely based upon Confucianism.

Creative Writing: The divergence between North and South Korea was due to the Korean War in the 1950s after World War 2, in which North Korea invaded South Korea in order to reunite both countries after their separtion after the second World War. World War Two had divided the countries into two, South Korea, the U.S. backed democratic state, and North Korea, the Communist nation. Due to South Korea's economy being based on capitalism, the economy has been growing and is currently doing much better than North Korea's. This, along with the United State's help has led to an increased life span of the general public, much greater than that of North Korea's. Because North Korea has been isolated by their government, they have had few contacts with any nations and has kept their own culture for much longer than South Korea, whose culture has been mixed with that of the West's.

Chapter 25

Section 1

1. Many people in the South Asian region rely on sustenance farming to receive their basic necessities.

2. India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan have free press.

Creative Writing: If I were to visit one country in Southern Asia, I would most likely go to Kathmandu, Nepal in order to see and possibly climb Mount Everest. Other regions interest me as well, such as India, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, because I would like to learn more about their cultures, but at least seeing Mount Everest would be more important to me, personally.

Section 2

1.The factors leading to internal violence in South Asia include the discrimination of the Tamils in Sri Lanke, the attempts of overthrowing democracy in Nepal for a Communist republic, President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan removing his support of Afghan Taliban, and the violence between Hindu, Muslim, and Sikh in India.

2. Negative consequences of rapid industrialization in the South Asian region include rapid deforestation, endangerment of indigenous species, and water pollution.

Creative Writing: Laws are placed in effect to stop people from logging and killing certain things at certain times for reasons that benefit plant, animal, and human alike. When too many deaths occur in a population of a species, that species may go extinct, meaning that you will have disrupted the life span of not only the species you killed, but the organisms that devoured that species and the organisms that the species you killed were killed by. This process produces havoc in the communities of the animal world, but also the plant and human worlds as well. The humans that relied on the species you killed will no longer have that animal to eat and the animals that relied on that species will also be affected, negatively or positively, which will negatively impact you at one point. The plants that used the dead animal as nutrients may also die out, meaning that you will not be able to use that wood for much longer either. Thus, if you disturb the ecosystem by not following the rules but into place to keep the ecosystem flowing correctly, you will destroy not only that species, but any species that was involved with that species, and destroy your own community.

Chapter 24

Section 1

1. India's population is widely distributed throughout the whole of the country, but in the recent years, more Indians have been found migrating towards the more urban and developed areas.

2. The two major world religions that helped shape India's history and culture are Buddhism and Hinduism.

Creative Writing: Life in the bigger cities of India is much different than in the village where I grew up in. With more money flowing around in their economies, the larger cities are able to spend much more money creating hospitals and schools, greatly improving health care and education. Here in Mumbai, there are twenty times as many films coming out in a year than there were in our village in ten years! The city life seems a little more distant compared to ours though, because people tend to take leisure activities for granted, such as going to the movies or watching television.

Section 2

1. Booming populations and urbanization have become problems for Bangladesh and Pakistan because they countries both have limited resources, especially food, and because the industrialization of these areas have caused mass amounts of pollution.

2. Several poems and plays have come from the Bangladeshi culture. Music and literature are the richest forms of Pakistani art forms, like Qawwali and musha'irahs.

Creative Writing: The Kashmir region is in the region of both northern Pakistan and India. This land was declared to be Pakistani. However, the Hindu prince of the region later fled from the region to Delhi and signed the state over to India. Even though India claimed a legal right to the region, Pakistan insisted it would be a better homeland for the Muslim residents of the region, so the region stayed Pakistani. Today, the two continue the conflict with this region, but are armed with nuclear weaponry, causing problems not just between the two, but now with any nation that tries to interfere.

Section 3

1. The arts of these nations can be seen throughout the region. the Buddhist stupas and dzongs show a religious aspect of their culture. Dance is popular mainly in Bhutan and Nepal. Sri Lanka produced an artist in both literature and theatre.

2. Hinduism and Islam are two main religions in this region.

Creative Writing: The choice between improving the healthcare or the literacy rate between two areas can be a very difficult one to make a definate decision on, but I believe that improving the literacy rate would be a more significant cause. With the improvement of literacy rate in a region, that region would have a firm foundation for which to grow upon. With more people being able to read, the people of this region would be to establish better governments and other things needed for a functioning society over time. Adding to this cause will allow people of poverty stricken countries to recieve the educations they need to improve the region, most likely increasing health care along the way.

Chapter 20

Section 1

1. The shifting of tectonic plates has caused lakes and rivers to widen, and has caused the formation of several land rifts, such as the Great Rift Valley.

2. A land form known as a delta splits both the Niger and the Zambezi River into two parts. The ground outside of Lake Chad swallows the moisture around it, which is shrinking the lake

Creative Writing: Mines for minerals in regions below the Sahara have several problems that include its topography and its water systems. Areas of large rifts, high mountains, and vast deserts make less than ideal mining camps because of their unstable ground and harsh conditions. Rivers that contain rapids, waterfalls, and those that empty into large bodies of water will not be able to be mined because they will not be able to shut off the river completely.

Section 2

1. Three factors that affect the climate of Africa are ocean currents, prevailing wind patterns, and elevation.

2. Three main kindas of climates in this region are tropical wet, tropical dry, and steppe, and in these climates are dense forests, grasslands and scattered trees, and shrubs and acacia trees, respectively.

Creative Writing: The vast plains of the Serengeti Plains of the central African region and the Great Plains of the central North American region are not unlike one another. Both regions are teeming with wildlife are large amounts of simple grasses and the scattered areas of trees along with a few systems of water, yet not very much fertile soil.

Chapter 22

Section 1

1. Cash crop production in middle and southern africa creates problems such as small-scale farmers not being able to meet their needs because the good land is taken up by plantations, famers not being able to use the left over land of plantations because of erosion and desertification, and food production falling low below average.

2. Transportation and communications in this region are changing because of plans like Nigeria building links to all parts of its railway system, the buildings of the Trans-African and Trans-Sahara Highway, and satellites are making telephones and televisions more usable

Creative Writing: Africans have taken on enormous amounts of debt because they have engaged on several large projects that cannot give back as much as they cost. For instance, their farming gave them some money for their cash crops, but because of their mining techniques, they leave the soil dry and unproductive, and in debt because of the purchase of the machinery and the fact that they cannot farm their again. Poorly thought out activities like this and building massive highways throughout Africa have left the people in this region deeply in debt and without a way to relieve themsleves of it.

Section 2

1. Three reasons why food shortages occur in parts of southern Africa and the Sahara are because of desertification due to poor farming practices, conflict between regions, and natural changes in weather, such as flash floods and drought

2. Three ways Southern Africa are helping perserve the environment are by protecting the remaining tropical forests, Ivory being banned world wide, and people renewing forests.

Creative Writing: The threats of man, war and famine are quite related to the threats to the environment, desertification and poaching. If there was no famine in Africa, the demand for the meat of African elephants would be lessened greatly, and there would be almost no demand for the killing of these creatures, because of the ban on world-wide trade of ivory. Also, if famine were eliminated, there would be little need for harsh farming of the land, possibly eliminating desertification as well. With no war, there would be no need for weapons, which would mean less demand for metals that are mined from the ground, and this would mean little to no toll on the environment.

Alternative Fuel Summation

1. I feel that solar power is the alternative fuel that is most ready for mass production because it is renewable, it produces a good amount of energy, and has little effect on the environment, besides the fact that if we were to make it our main fuel source, we would have to cut down forests and put it in spaces that we may not want to, but this is a problem that follows most alternative fuels.

2. I think that electricity coming from nuclear power would be the best substitute for gasoline because it has the highest energy output compared to all of the alternative fuels, making the energy that consumers receive cleaner, safer, and cheaper.

3. The fuel I think must work out the most problems before mass produced is hydroelectric power. This alternative fuel is not yet widely produced and does not produce much energy compared to gasoline or other alternative fuel sources. And this is one of the main problems: it does not produce enough energy. If it is to be mass produced, it would be more likely to succeed if the fuel cells could obtain more energy from the fuel given, otherwise, most people would simply stay with their regular cars.

4. Even though wind power does not produce much energy, I think that it would have the least amount of problems in mass production. This is because the wind turbines could be placed almost anywhere on the world, even in oceans and other large bodies of water, so forest and other ecosystems would not have to be destroyed in order to create a large amount of these turbines.

5. Despite the high amounts of energy produced by this product, I believe that nuclear power would have the most trouble with mass production. This is because it would take a large amount of money to buy all of the safety equipment used to handle the radioactive materials and their waste products. It would take money to make sure that everyone is acting appropriately around these materials and to hollow out mountains and make areas inside of them to store the nuclear waste. And the more power plants we have, the more likely it is for an accident to happen, resulting in nuclear meltdowns, explosions, etc.

Short Essay: From this project, I have seen the advantages and disadvantages to several different kinds of clean alternative fuels that I did not know of before. These included their effectiveness, their impact on the environment, their impact on the economy, and information like this. The future looks brighter for some fuels than others, but the future of some simply depend on how much the fuel can change for better or for worse. For instance, hydroelectric power may not seem very useful or practical for those on a budget, because it does not produce a large quantity of energy for how much fuel it has. Nuclear power is the most realistic alternative fuel because it can produce the largest amount of energy compared to the amount of fuel that it has, making it the most viable. However, wind power seems to be the least plausible of the alternative fuels presented because it can produce a satisfactory amount of energy at some point, but because the patterns of wind change constantly, the amount of energy will be unpredictable, and the overall cost of a wind farm is very high. The most practical fuel for automobile industries to take up over oil would be nuclear power because, despite the possible toll it may take on the environment, it produces the most energy by far. Some fuels will be more accessible than others. For instance, hydroelectric stations are very rare, making them very inaccessible and thus unwanted and impractical compared to other fuel sources. In the future, I would most likely see myself harnessing solar power by putting them on my roof in order to produce some of my own power to save money, but unless the electricity from other sources are mixed in with the electricity I already receive, I doubt that I would use any alternative fuel sources.

Chapter 16

Section 1

1. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, state-run farms have been modified for the new market economy, Russian industries have been selling parts of their companies to other parts of the world, private car ownership doubled, cellular phone service has doubled, and telecommunications has increased greatly as well.

2. Russia is focused upon becoming a full partner in global community by expanding trade and building international relationships with the Pacific Economic Cooperation and the World Trade Organization.

Creative Writing: In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev and his successor, Boris Yeltsin, made a transition into a market economy by encouraging privatization and foreign investment. By letting small businesses start and grow, and allowing a turn towards investing in technology, Russia eventually got out of its economic turmoil.

Section 2

1. The World Banks's Sustainable Forestry Pilot Project helps Russia manage its forests, along with several civilians, who also make movements against things like the mining operation in Kamchatka.

2. In Russia's future, they country will have to see the affects of their supertrawlers, which kill millions of fish annually, and the possible oil spills from the large pipelines the build.

Creative Writing: During 1949 and 1987, the Soviet Union was exposed to over six hundred nuclear explosions. One fire, in Chernobyl, was exposed to a fire in the nuclear reactor of their town. This fire had 400 times the amount of radioactivity as post-nuclear bomb Hiroshima and swept over Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, and several other countries, causing millions of people to be exposed to lethal amounts of radioations.

Chapter 15

Section 1

1. After the fall of the USSR in 1991, people are able to explore their faiths and traditions and express them, because during the time of the Soviet Union, people were encouraged to take up atheism and not practice their former religions.

2. Russia's major ethnic groups include the Slavs, the Caucasians, and the Turks.

Creative Writing: The practices of post-Soviet Russia have improved greatly compared to the limited action allowed in the USSR. Now that our schooling is more free, we are able to take classes to learn of our heritage and our history as Russians, rather that simply focus on math and science. We can now also take our expressive ideas and use them for our future in arts, now that the Soviet government is no longer limits our art to glorifying the government. As you can see, our country, now, is able to show its true opinions, making this era the better one for Russia.

Section 2

1. The ancestors of the ancient Russians were the Slavs.

2. The causes of the breakup of the USSR include the weakened economy, disagreements between the wages of the workers and the luxuries that their leaders enjoyed, and the conflict that the Soviet Union had with the US.

Creative Writing: During the Cold War, the Soviet Union and America had a virtual "race" as to who could make the best nuclear weapon and were trying to control other countries by their influences of communism and capitalism, respectively. Both of these countries wanted to uses these questionably real weapons as a threat towards the countries that did not follow them. As these countries continually tried to make better weapons, Russia found themselves steadily losing funds that were going to this as well as other causes. With their economy in shambles, the USSR broke apart into several independent countries.

Chapter 14

Section 1.

1. The land area of Russia is 6.6 million square miles.

2. Russia's natural resources are fossil fuels, such as petroleum and coal, and minerals such as nickel, aluminum, gemstones, and platinum-group metals.

Creative Writing: While Russia is one of the major producers of fossil fuels and minerals in the world, many people may not care what else may lie in its soil. Russian land holds about one fifth of the worlds forests and thus is second only to the Amazon in terms of how much oxygen is released back into the atmosphere. In addition to the amounts of oxygen that the forests put back, they also create a home for millions of living creatures, from single-celled bacteria to woodland creatures. For not only the good of these creatures, but for the good of humanity, the Russian forests must be preserved.

Section 2.

1. Russia's major climate region include steppe, humid continental, subarctic, and tundra.

2. In the tundra, only small plants, such as moss, shrubs, and algae can survive. Softwood timber and other coniferous trees are the major vegetation supported in the subarctic region. In the humid continental regions, there are grasslands, several crops, like wheat and sunflowers, and coniferous-deciduous forests. The steppe climate allows sunflowers, mint, and beans to flourish.

Creative Writing: I have marched with my brothers, sometimes running, in order to try to enter a burning house so that I might find some scraps of food. The moral of my superiors is fading just as quickly as the rest of the men as they see their men fall into the snow from starvation, freezing, and exhaustion. We lose a man with every step towards the fleeing Russians and yet, I have not seen a frozen Russian, most likely due to the fact that they are much more prepared and have adapted to the inhospitable freezing wasteland. While I may not be able to see a few meters in front of me, the outcome of the war is quite clear: not one third of the men will ever see the border of Russia again.