Empathy

In phenomenology, empathy refers to the experience of another human body as another subjectivity: You see another body, but you immediately perceive another subject. In Husserl's original account, this was done by apperception built on the experiences of your own lived-body which you experience in a dual way, both as object (you can touch your own hand) and as your own subjectivity (you are being touched). This experience of your own body as your own subjectivity is then applied to the experience of another's body, which, through apperception, is constituted as another subjectivity. This experience of empathy is important in the phenomenological account of intersubjectivity.

Ethnography

Ethnography is a genre of writing that uses fieldwork to provide a descriptive study of human societies. Ethnography presents the results of a holistic research method founded on the idea that a system's properties cannot necessarily be accurately understood independently of each other. The genre has both formal and historical connections to travel writing and colonial office reports. Several academic traditions, in particular the constructivist and relativist paradigms, employ ethnographic research as a crucial research method. Many cultural anthropologists consider ethnography the essence of the discipline.

Cultural anthropology and social anthropology were developed around ethnographic research and their canonical texts which are mostly ethnographies: e.g. Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922) by Bronisław Malinowski, Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) by Margaret Mead, The Nuer (1940) by E. E. Evans-Pritchard, or Naven (1958) by Gregory Bateson. Cultural & social anthropologists today place such a high value on actually doing ethnographic research that ethnology—the comparative synthesis of ethnographic information—is rarely the foundation for a career. Within cultural anthropology, there are several sub-genres of ethnography. Beginning in the late 1950s and early 1960s, anthropologists began writing "bi-confessional" ethnographies that intentionally exposed the nature of ethnographic research. Famous examples include Tristes Tropiques by Claude Lévi-Strauss, The High Valley by Kenneth Read, and The Savage and the Innocent by David Maybury-Lewis, as well as the mildly fictionalized Return to Laughter by Elenore Smith Bowen (Laura Bohannan). Later "reflexive" ethnographies refined the technique to translate cultural differences by representing their effects on the ethnographer. Famous examples include "Deep Play: Notes on a Balinese Cockfight" by Clifford Geertz, Reflections on Fieldwork in Morocco by Paul Rabinow, The Headman and I by Jean-Paul Dumont, and Tuhami by Vincent Crapanzano. In the 1980s, the rhetoric of ethnography was subjected to intense scrutiny within the discipline, under the general influence of literary theory and post-colonial/post-structuralist thought. "Experimental" ethnographies that reveal the ferment of the discipline include Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man by Michael Taussig, Debating Muslims by Michael F. J. Fischer and Mehdi Abedi, A Space on the Side of the Road by Kathleen Stewart, and Advocacy after Bhopal by Kim Fortun.

Ecotope

Ecotopes are the smallest ecologically-distinct landscape features in a landscape mapping and classification system. As such, they represent relatively homogeneous, spatially-explicit landscape functional units that are useful for stratifying landscapes into ecologically distinct features for the measurement and mapping of landscape structure, function and change.

Like ecosystems, ecotopes are identified using flexible criteria, in the case of ecotopes, by criteria defined within a specific ecological mapping and classification system. Just as ecosystems are defined by the interaction of biotic and abiotic components, ecotope classification should stratify landscapes based on a combination of both biotic and abiotic factors, including vegetation, soils, hydrology, and other factors. Other parameters that must be considered in the classification of ecotopes include their period of stability (such as the number of years that a feature might persist), and their spatial scale (minimum mapping unit).

The first definition of ecotope was made by Arthur Tansley in 1939. He stated that an ecotope is "the particular portion, […], of the physical world that forms a home for the organisms which inhabit it". In 1945 Carl Troll first applied the term to landscape ecology "the smallest spatial object or component of a geographical landscape". Other academics clarified this to suggest that an ecotope is ecologically homogeneous and is the smallest ecological land unit that is relevant.

The term "Patch" was used in place of the term "Ecotope", by Foreman and Godron (1986), who defined a patch as "a nonlinear surface area differing in appearance from its surroundings". However, by definition, ecotopes must be identifed using a full suite of ecosystem characteristics: patches are a more general type of spatial unit than ecotopes.

In ecology an ecotope has also been defined as "The species relation to the full range of environmental and biotic variables affecting it" (Whittaker et al, 1973), but the term is rarely used in this context, due to confusion with the ecological niche concept.

Maceration (food)

Maceration, also known as macerating in food preparation refers to softening or breaking into pieces with liquid.

Raw, dried or preserved fruit or vegetables are soaked in liquid to soften and to absorb the flavor of the liquid. In the case of fruit, they are often just sprinkled with sugar, then left to sit and release their own juices. This process makes the food more flavorful and easier to chew and digest.

Also, French Polynesians macerate their native flower, Tiare, which is also known as the Tahitian gardenia, in refined coconut extract for a number of days to infuse the fragrance of the Tiare into the oil. The result is Monoi de Tahiti oil, which is used to moisturize and perfume the skin.

Maceration is often confused with marination (also known as marinating), which is the process of soaking foods in a seasoned, often acidic, liquid before cooking.

Bacillus

Bacillus is a genus of rod-shaped, beta-hemolytic Gram-positive bacteria and a member of the division Firmicutes. Bacillus species are either obligate or facultative aerobes, and test positive for the enzyme catalase. Ubiquitous in nature, Bacillus includes both free-living and pathogenic species. Under stressful environmental conditions, the cells produce oval endospores that can stay dormant for extended periods. These characteristics originally defined the genus, but not all such species are closely related, and many have been moved to other genera.

Bacillus subtilis is one of the best understood prokaryotes in terms of molecular biology and cell biology. Its superb genetic amenability and relatively large size have provided the powerful tools required to investigate a bacterium from all possible aspects. Recent improvements in fluorescence microscopy techniques have provided novel and amazing insight into the dynamic structure of a single cell organism. Research on Bacillus subtilis has been at the forefront of bacterial molecular biology and cytology, and the organism is a model for differentiation, gene/protein regulation, and cell cycle events in bacteria.

Two Bacillus species are considered medically significant: B. anthracis, which causes anthrax, and B. cereus, which causes a foodborne illness similar to that of Staphylococcus. A third species, B. thuringiensis, is an important insect pathogen, and is sometimes used to control insect pests. The type species is B. subtilis, an important model organism. It is also a notable food spoiler, causing ropiness in bread and related food. B. coagulans is also important in food spoilage.

An easy way to isolate Bacillus is by placing non-sterile soil in a test tube with water, shaking, placing in melted Mannitol Salt Agar, and incubating at room temperature for at least a day. Colonies are usually large, spreading and irregularly-shaped. Under the microscope, the Bacillus appear as rods, and a substantial portion usually contain an oval endospore at one end, making it bulge.