CULTURAL DIFFERENCES

• Crossing your legs is frowned upon in America

• The Arabs don't trush in people in a hurry because for them means that the other doesn't want any relationship with them, only money

• The colour of mourning is the white in the Middle East and many countries in Asia and Africa

• In Italy the number 13 is not an unlucky number because their football pools have 13 hits, but it is the number 17 unlucky because it reminds a hanged

• To indicate that someone is lying, the Japanese suck their index finger and they pass it through their eyebrow

PE PROJECT

GEOGRAPHY: GLOSSARY UNIT 10

Cereals: Grasses grown for the edible components of their grain, such as rice and wheat.

Mortgage: A loan to finance the purchase of private residential or commercial property.

Speculation: Investment in stocks, property of other assets in the hope of gain, but with the risk of loss.

Crop: A cultivated plant to be harvested as food, animal fodder, fuel or for any other economic purpose.

Agricultural landscape: A landscape that has been transformed by people to cultivate crops and/or rear livestock.

Cultural heritage: The things, places and practices that define who we are as individuals, as communities, as nations or cultures.

Domestic tourism: Tourism in which tourists do not leave their own country.

Large-scale tourism: Travel and accommodation offered to large groups at affordable prices by tour operators.

Tour operators: A company that combines tour and travel components to cater for large-scale tourism.

High-speed rail: A type of rail transport involving high-speed trains.

Peak season: The season when travel is most active and rates are highest.

Off-peak season: The season when travel is less active and rates are lower.

Recession: A business cycle contraction; a general slowdown in economic activity.

GEOGRAPHY: GLOSSARY UNIT 9

Freight: goods or produce transported by ship, aircraft, train, lorry or van.

Capital flows: the money that is moved around the world

Exports: goods or services that are sold outside the country where they are produced.

Imports: goods or services that are brought into a country from abroad for sale.

Balance of trade: the difference between the monetary value of the exports and the imports of a country.

Balance of payments: all monetary transactions between a country and the world

Retail: a type of trade in which businesses sell small quantities of goods directly to consumers.

Wholesale: trade in which buyers purchase large quantities of goods and sell them, in smaller quantities, to other companies.

Trade bloc: a group of countries that join together to form an area with special trade regulations.

Transport network: the connection of road, railway lines, ports or airports that facilitate the transport of goods and/or people.

Market: the meeting of buyers and sellers of goods and services. It can be tangible or abstract and it decides the prices of goods and services

Infrastructure: the basic physical and organizational structures needed for an economy to function.

Trade: the buying and selling of goods to meet the needs of the population.

Bartering: the first way of trading in history

Tourism: a sector dedicated to travel for recreational, leisure or business purposes.

Information society: society in which revolutionary advances an IT dominate the economy

Public services: cover basic need of population

Private services: offer personalised services to companies

GEOGRAPHY: TRAVEL TO PORTO

GEOGRAPHY: GLOSSARY UNIT 8

Mechanization: The use of machinery in the production process

Mining: The process of extracting minerals from the ground

Mineral: a naturally occurring solid chemical substance such as bauxite. Most minerals need to be transformed to enable them to be used for manufacturing products

Fossil fuels: fuel that is formed by the decomposition of buried organic material, and exposure to heat and pressure, producing substances such as coal, oil and gas.

Industry: any economic activity that produces a service or transforms raw material into consumer goods.

Irrigated farming: is the artificial application of water to the land or soil.

Energy: power that comes from the utilization of physical or chemical resources to provide light and heat or to work machines.

Biomass: organic material used as a fuel that releases energy when burned

Management: the people that run a company and ensure that goods and services of a high enough quality are produced and sold at competitive prices.


Workforce:  the employees required to produce goods and services.

Wind turbine: a device that converts kinetic energy from the wind into mechanical energy to drive machinery or generate electricity.

Solar panel:  is a set of solar photovoltaic modules electrically connected and mounted on a supporting structure.

Renewable energy: is generally defined as energy that comes from resources which are naturally replenished on a human time-scale such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, waves and geothermal heat.  

Non-renewable energy: is a resource that does not renew itself at a sufficient rate for sustainable economic extraction in meaningful human time-frames.

Traditional energy: refers to the energy sources that are most commonly used

Alternative energy: is any energy source that is an alternative to fossil fuel. These alternatives are intended to address concerns about such fossil fuels.

Dam: is a barrier that impounds water or underground streams.

Guild: is an association of artisans or merchants who control the practice of their craft in a particular town. 

Heavy industry: does not have a single fixed meaning as compared to light industry. It can mean production of products which are either heavy in weight or in the processes leading to their production.

Light industry:  is usually less capital intensive than heavy industry, and is more consumer-oriented than business-oriented (most light industry products are produced for end users rather than as intermediates for use by other industries).

Cutting-edge industries: industries that employ advanced technology

Craftspersons: a person who makes products using basic tools and manual labour.

THE PRINTING PRESS

This invention was created by Johannes Gutenberg around the year 1450. This useful object is used for the reproduction of text or images on paper or similar materials.

Gutenberg bet that he could make a copy of the Bible in less than half the time  than it took to copy the faster copyist monk of all the Christian world and that they don't differentiate at all of the handwriting by him