European Exploration of Africa

Europeans have been interested in African geography since the time of the Greek and Roman Empires.   Around 150 C.E., Ptolemy created a map of the world that included the Nile and the great lakes of East Africa.   In the Middle Ages, the large Ottoman Empire blocked European access to Africa and its trade goods, but Europeans still learned about Africa from Islamic maps and travelers, like Ibn Battuta. The Catalan Atlas created in 1375, which includes many African coastal cities, the Nile River, and other political and geographical features, shows how much Europe knew about North and West Africa. Portuguese Exploration By the 1400s, Portuguese sailors, backed by Prince Henry the Navigator, began exploring the West coast of Africa looking for a mythical Christian king named Prester John and a way to the wealth of Asia that avoided the Ottomans and the powerful empires of South West Asia.   By 1488, the Portuguese had charted a way around the South African Cape and in 1498, Vasco da Gama reached Mombasa, in what is today Kenya, where he encountered Chinese and Indian merchants. Europeans made few inroads into Africa, though, until the 1800s, due to the strong African states they encountered, tropical diseases, and a relative lack of interest. Europeans instead grew rich trading gold, gum, ivory, and slaves with coastal merchants.   Science, Imperialism, and the Quest for the Nile In the late 1700s, a group of British men, inspired by the Enlightenment ideal of learning, decided that Europe should know much more about Africa. They formed the African Association in 1788 to sponsor expeditions to the continent.   With the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade in 1808, European interest in the interior of Africa grew quickly.   Geographical Societies were formed and sponsored expeditions. The Parisian Geographical Society offered a 10,000 franc prize to the first explorer who could reach the town of Timbuktu (in present-day Mali) and return alive. The new scientific interest in Africa was never wholly philanthropic, however. Financial and political support for exploration grew out of the desire for wealth and national power. Timbuktu, for instance, was believed to be rich in gold.   By the 1850s, interest in African exploration had become an international race, much like the Space Race between the U.S. and U.S.S.R in the 20th century.   Explorers like David Livingstone, Henry M. Stanley, and Heinrich Barth became national heroes, and the stakes were high. A public debate between Richard Burton and John H. Speke over the source of the Nile led to the suspected suicide of Speke, who was later proven correct.   Explorers’ travels also helped pave the way for European conquest, but the explorers themselves had little to no power in Africa for much of the century. They were deeply dependent on the African men they hired and the assistance of African kings and rulers, who were often interested in acquiring new allies and new markets.   European Madness and African Knowledge Explorers accounts of their travels downplayed the assistance they received from African guides, leaders, and even slave traders. They also presented themselves as calm, cool, and collected leaders masterfully directing their porters across unknown lands.   The reality was that they were often following existing routes and, as Johann Fabian showed, were disoriented by fevers, drugs, and cultural encounters that went against everything they expected to find in so-called savage Africa.   Readers and historians believed explorers accounts, though, and it was not until recent years that people began to recognize the critical role that Africans and African knowledge played in the exploration of Africa. Sources Fabian, Johannes, Out of Our Minds: Reason and Madness in the Exploration of Central Africa. (2000). Kennedy, Dane. The Last Blank Spaces: Exploring Africa and Australia. (2013).

Recruitment Strategies For Recruiting Foreign Nationals

2.2.2 Recruitment With volunteers choosing to devote less time to volunteer programs, it has become a struggle for organizations to compete for volunteers. To develop more effective recruitment strategies, an organization must identify the volunteer market or a market niche. Recruiting foreign nationals is another option to increase the volunteer pool and can be accessed through corporations, colleges and universities, immigrant programs, and foreign exchange programs. Individuals that participate have the benefit of making new friends, learning the host culture, utilizing their skills and talents, learning new skills, improving their English, and sharing their culture and language. Once an organization has completed its recruitment†¦show more content†¦2.2.4 Training and Development Once the right candidates have been selected, the next step is to properly train the new volunteers using the appropriate human resources management strategies in order for them to accurately perform the tasks of their new jobs. These training and development strategies are a great tool to motivate current volunteers, as well as teach new volunteers their jobs. In order to develop a training strategy, an assessment of the training needs of the organization is required. A needs assessment will use organizational, personnel, and task analysis to identify the suitability of training, who needs training, and what tasks, knowledge, skills, and behaviors need to be trained. Once this is completed, a learning environment must be created. The responsibility of the learning department falls under the human resources department and consists of the following steps: †¢ Establishing learning objectives and training outcomes †¢ Providing meaningful material or content †¢ Encouraging practice sessions and utilizing lessons learned †¢ Giving and receiving feedback †¢ Administering and coordinating training programs Finally, an evaluation of the training program will ensure that volunteers have been provided with the knowledge, skills, abilities, and resources

Influence of Aeration on Fermentation and Microbial Contamination Risks free essay sample

Brewing is a fermentative process which converts carbohydrate rich raw materials into beer using yeast catalysts such as Baker’s yeast and species of Saccharomyces. Water quality and aeration conditions influence beer quality to a greater extent. Of these two, aeration plays a vital role. Aeration and Fermentation: Studies revealed that yeast cells propagation was doubled when cultured under prolonged aerobic conditions as compared to discontinuous aeration. Moreover, increase in cell growth was proportional to aeration volume, mainly due to the synthesis of sterols and unsaturated fatty acids which are important elements of the yeast cell membrane. Under batch fermentation, aeration affected 1st fermentation; nevertheless, successive fermentation was yeast strain dependent. Chul (2002) observed significant differences in levels of aroma compounds obtained with yeast propagated under different aerobic conditions. However aerobic conditions were not found to affect the levels of diacetyl.   According to Chul et al (2007), continuous aeration during yeast propagation directly influenced yeast metabolism, fermentation ability and beer quality. We will write a custom essay sample on Influence of Aeration on Fermentation and Microbial Contamination Risks or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page Microbial contamination risks: Certain groups of micro-organisms pose contamination risk in brewing. Most hazardous beer spoilage microbial agents are the species of Lactobacilli, Pedicocci and Micrococcus kristinae. Lactobacilli are gram-positive, facultative, anaerobic bacteria. Some species of Lactobacilli which are the common beer spoilage organisms are said to operate using homofermentative metabolism, by lowering the pH of fermentation process by producing lactic acid. These species are generally resistant to hop compounds. Lactobacillus brevis has the ability to ferment dextrins and starch and its contaminations in beer cause turbidity and super-attenuation (Vaughan et al. 2005). Pediococci are also homofermentative bacteria, which normally grow in pairs or tetrads, and are found in finished beers and wort fermentations. Presence of Pediococci leaves behind fermentable sugars in beer even after fermentation, thus causing ropiness. Micrococcus kristinae is an aerobic, gram-positive coccus occurring in tetrads or groups of four, forming pale cream to pale orange colonies. The primary habitat is the mammalian skin (Microbial glossary). Most of the strains are non-pathogens but some tend to be opportunistic pathogens. These species can grow in beer with significantly lower levels of alcohol and hop compounds and at pH values above 4.5 (Vaughan et al. 2005) and produce a fruity atypical aroma. Gram negative anaerobic bacteria such as Pectinatus cerevisiiphilus, Pectinatus frisingensis, Selenomonas lacticifex, Zymophilus raffinosivorans and Zymomonas mobilis are also potential beer spoilage microbes. Pectinatus species have found to greatly affect non-pasteurized beers rather than pasteurized ones. These anaerobic organisms ideally grow in packaged products between 15 and 40 °C with an optimum at 32 °C and at a pH of 4.5 (Vaughan et al. 2005). They are found to produce significant amounts of acetic acid, propionic acid and acetoin in wort and packaged beers. They also produce hydrogen sulphide and methyl mercaptan and cause considerable turbidity and an unpleasant ‘rotten egg’ odor in beer. Zymomonas mobilis is an organism widely used in the bio-ethanol synthesis. However, this species contaminates beer when it produces significantly higher levels of acetaldehyde and hydrogen sulphide. Gram negative aerobic bacteria such as Hafnia protea and Enterobacter cloacae also other agents which cause beer spoilage and are capable of surviving beer fermentation. Certain species of Saccharomyces are also organism causing beer contamination. Works Cited: Cheong, Chul.   Wackerbauer, Karl. and Kang, Soon AH. â€Å"Influence of aeration during propagation of pitching yeast on fermentation and beer flavor.† J. Microbiol. Biotechnol. 17(2). 2007: 297 – 304. Microbial glossary – Environmental Diagnostic Laborarory, retrieved from http://www.pureaircontrols.com/glossary.html Vaughan, Anne. O’Sullivan, Tadhg.   and Sinderen, Douwe Van. â€Å"Enhancing the Microbiological Stability of Malt and Beer – A Review.† Publication no. G-2005-1316-408. The Institute of Brewing Distilling. 111 ( 4). 2005: 355 – 371.