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worldwide sales of digital music grew by 40 per cent last year

CDs would continue to narrow.

"Record labels are continually diversifying and moving away from CDs because they know that fans have completely changed the way they are buying music.''

In China, where piracy is rampant, the music industry is considering a lawsuit against Baidu.com, the largest Internet provider

less willing to buy music on the one hand, and others saying they use downloading to make better-informed purchases on the other hand.

Internet services such as Napster and Kazaa contend that record labels are simply not releasing enough good music, and consumers see DVDs as a better value than CDs.

piracy has made it easy for many people to get music for free, allowing consumers to download songs and spend their money on DVDs instead.

SERVICE DOG TASKS

microbats eat insects, blood (small quantities of the blood of animals), small mammals, and fish

Mother bats usually have only one offspring per year

they are viviparous

Young microbats become independent at the age of 6 to 8 weeks

At the age of two years, bats are sexually mature

megabats not until they are four months old

A single bat can live over 20 years

Most microbats are active at night or at twilight

In Western Culture, the bat is often a symbol of the night and its foreboding nature

the rain interferes with their echo location

Only three species sustain themselves with blood.

Only 0.5% of bats carry rabies

Bats have very small teeth and can bite a sleeping person without being felt

Bats are closely associated with vampires

Bats are also a symbol of ghosts, death, and disease

Chinese lore claims the bat is a symbol of longevity and happiness

the bat is a trickster spirit

Bats rarely fly in rain

A measure of the success of bats is their estimated total of about 1,100 species worldwide, accounting for about 20 percent of all mammal species.

cannot be reversed to regenerate the original fuel mass

a fuel problem does exist

If the supply of fuel is finite, not only will there be no energy supply when the fuel is exhausted

all other processes that depend on it will cease

Several factors combine to make the problem an urgent one

World population

demand for energy will also increase

coal, oil (petroleum), natural gas, uranium, and fuel wood—is limited and insufficient to sustain rapid rates of development.

debate about the exact length of time available before the effects of a worldwide shortage become apparent

shortage will occur.

geothermal energy, hydroelectric power, peat, ocean thermal energy, solar energy, tidal energy, wind power, and fuel wood.

replenish themselves naturally in a relatively short time and will therefore always be available.

Renewable energy resources

indirectly responsible for many other renewable energy sources.

ocean currents and winds are results of the uneven distribution of solar radiation over the Earth's surface

winds in turn produce waves whose energy can be utilized

windmills and wind power

ocean thermal energy, solar heating of the upper layers of the ocean produces temperature gradients that can be harnessed to generate electricity

Sun also powers the hydrologic cycle, in which ocean water is evaporated, transported over the continents, and precipitated as rain or snow to form rivers

flow energy produces hydroelectric power.

energy locked in such renewable fuel sources as wood and peat is derived from the Sun by the process of photosynthesis.

renewable energy source is geothermal energy

arises through the leakage of heat from the Earth's interior to the surface

over the entire surface of the Earth at a very low average rate, leakage is much higher in certain locations.

Yellowstone National Park

Iceland, Italy, and New Zealand.

possible to tap the heat and use it for human purposes.

Nonrenewable resources originate from two processes: (1) photosynthesis, which occurred many millions of years ago, followed by the fossilization of the plant and animal life that resulted, and (2) the formation of the Earth itself.

fossil fuels—coal, oil (petroleum), and natural gas;

produced the fuels for nuclear energy, such as uranium for fission and lighter elements for fusion

irreplaceable fuels represent an energy capital that must be invested wisely.

A cleaner-burning fuel than oil, natural gas seemed to be in abundant supply at the turn of the 21st century and, with the greatly enlarged network of gas pipelines, was rapidly growing in use.

nearly total dependence on fossil fuels and hydroelectricity ensures that efforts to solve energy problems by switching to alternative sources will have to overcome a great deal of inertia, both economic and psychological.

sources as solar power, wind power, and synthetic fuels suffer from the serious drawback that few major installations now exist.

handicapped by the engineering problems of converting the energy to a form useful to human beings.

solar energy reaches the top of the atmosphere in amounts 10,000 times greater than all human production of energy, it reaches the Earth's surface at rates of only about 80 to 250 W/m2, and considerably less on cloudy days.

arge-scale system based on solar-collector panels will be physically huge, causing problems of maintenance and land use

Wind power, wave power, and ocean-thermal-generation sources suffer from similar difficulties

"We either reduce our CO2 emission now or many corals will be lost forever," warned Julia Marton-Lefevre, IUCN Director General.

According to the study, the Caribbean region has the highest number of highly threatened corals.

As they are home to over 25 percent of marine species -- including fish stocks -- loss of reefs could also impact coastal fishing communities.

depend on coral reefs for their livelihoods,

reef-building corals in particular were "most vulnerable to the effects of climate change".

Sea temperature rises bleach and weaken the algae that give the underwater sea life its vibrant color, and make it more susceptible to diseases.

Some bats have evolved a highly sophisticated sense of hearing.

Gestation 40 days - 6 months

Litter Size Mostly one pupFor their size, bats are the slowest reproducing mammals on Earth.

Male bats do not help to raise the pups.

The greatest threat to bats is people.

Barnstormers, who were in fact aerial showmen, fired the imagination of aviators and skydivers after World War I. The barnstormers showed airborne performances and parachute jumps and travelled every year throughout the United States. Competitions began as a result of the increase of parachuting awareness. The first contest of accuracy landing was held in 1930 in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

The military used paratroopers in World War II , that is between 1939 and 1945. The paratroopers were parachute-equipped soldiers and had the most famous use on D-Day, the invasion of Normandy (Normandie), France, on June 6, 1944

The surplus of nylon parachute equipment after World War II and the fact that the U.S. Army had started the first military sport parachuting clubs, set the grounds of skydiving in the United Dtates, as a pleasant and relaxing activity. The same thing happened in many other countries, and thus , the first parachuting world championships were organized in 1951 in Yugoslavia.

Little by little, in the mid 1960, systems specially made for sport parachutes took the place of the military surplus systems. Parachutists started to call this activity skydiving and calling themselves skydivers. In order to improve the opening characteristics and to make them more maneuverable, there were a few sport modifications to military parachutes. A French Canadian kite builder, Domina Jalbert, developed in 1964 the the ram-air design, that has set the tendencies for parachutes in skydiving from then on.

Sport skydivers constantly tested new and revolutionary designs and materials. Apart from sport uses , there have also been designed sport-generated designs like military HAHO (high altitude, high opening) designs, smoke jumping designs and many types of equipment for two-person and four-person tandem jumping. The military HAHO designs allowed soldiers to silently fly over large areas. The smoke jumping designs aimed to put firefighters into remote forest fires from low altitude.

Skydiving has kept on becoming more and more popular after the late 1980s, and this is because the equipment, that is reliable, lightweight, and easy-to-operate, picture this sport as accesible to many people. The U.S. president George H. W. Bush also jumped , thus increasing the popularity of skydiving.

There are four basic elements that form the foundation of breakdance. These are toprock, downrock (also known as footwork), power moves, and freezes.

Battles are an integral part of the b-boying culture. They can take the form of a cypher battle and an organized battle. Both types of battles are head to head confrontations between individuals or groups of dancers who try to out-dance each other.

There are more than 2 million children under the age of 15 living with the HIV infection

0 percent of those infected with HIV may not know they are carrying the virus.

he endorses the ABCs encouraged by Youth AIDS: Abstinence or Be faithful or Consistent use of safe-sex methods.