the role of the visual merchandising department is primarily

In retail commerce, visual display merchandising means merchandise sales using product design, selection, packaging, pricing, and display that stimulates consumers to spend more. This includes disciplines and discounting, physical presentation of products and displays, and the decisions about which products should be presented to which customers at what time.

Merchandising

In the broadest sense, merchandising is any practice which contributes to the sale of products to a retail consumer. At a retail in-store level, merchandising refers to the variety of products available for sale and the display of those products in such a way that it stimulates interest and entices customers to make a purchase.

Merchandising helps to understand the ordinary dating notation for the terms of payment of an invoice.[clarification needed] Codified discounting solves pricing problems including markups and markdowns. It helps to find the net price of an item after single or multiple trade discounts and can calculate a single discount rate that is equivalent to a series of multiple discounts. Further, it helps to calculate the amount of cash discount for which a payment qualifies.

The annual cycle of merchandising differs between countries and even within them, particularly relating to cultural customs like holidays, and seasonal issues like climate and local sporting and recreation. Events such as Chinese festivals and Japanese festivals are incorporated in an annual cycle of shop decorations and merchandise promotion.

In the United States, the basic retail cycle begins in early January with merchandise for Valentine's Day, which is not until mid-February. Presidents' Day sales are held shortly thereafter. Following this, Easter is the major holiday, while springtime clothing and garden-related merchandise is already arriving at stores, often as early as mid-winter (toward the beginning of this section, St. Patrick's Day merchandise, including green items and products pertaining to Irish culture, is also promoted). Mother's Day and Father's Day are next, with graduation gifts (typically small consumer electronics like digital cameras) often being marketed as "dads and grads" in June (though most college semesters end in May; the grads portion usually refers to high school graduation, which ends one to two weeks after Father's Day in many U.S. states). Summer merchandise is next, including patriotic-themed products with the American flag, out by Memorial Day in preparation for Independence Day (with Flag Day in between). By July, back-to-school is on the shelves and autumn merchandise is already arriving, and at some arts and crafts stores, Christmas decorations. (Often, a Christmas in July celebration is held around this time.) The back-to-school market is promoted heavily in August, when there are no holidays to promote. By September, particularly after Labor Day, summer merchandise is on final closeout and overstock of school supplies is marked-down some as well, and Halloween (and often even more of the Christmas) merchandise is appearing. As the Halloween decorations and costumes dwindle in October, Christmas is already being pushed on consumers, and by the day after Halloween retailers are going full-force with advertising, even though the "official" season doesn't start until the day after Thanksgiving. Christmas clearance sales begin even before Christmas at many retailers, though others begin on the day after Christmas and continue on at least until New Year's Day but sometimes as far out as February.

Merchandising also varies within retail chains, where stores in places like Buffalo might carry snow blowers, while stores in Florida and southern California might instead carry beach clothing and barbecue grills all year. Coastal-area stores might carry water skiing equipment, while ones near mountain ranges would likely have snow skiing and snowboarding gear if there are ski areas nearby.

In Eastern Europe, particularly in Russia, the term "merchandising" is commonly used within the trading industry and denotes all marketing and sales stimulation activities around PoS (point of sale): design, creation, promotion, care, and training of the sales staff. A merchandiser is someone who is continuously involved in business promotion by buying and selling of goods. In Asian countries, such as India, this term is more synonymous with activities right from sampling and idea conception to dispatching of the shipment. It is a job description that involves leading and working with different departments within the organization, suppliers and buyers to deal with timely deadlines and accepted quality levels.

In the supply chain, merchandising is the practice of making products in retail outlets available to consumers, primarily by stocking shelves and displays. While this used to be done exclusively by the stores' employees, many retailers have found substantial savings in requiring it to be done by the manufacturer, vendor, or wholesaler that provides the products to the retail store. In the United Kingdom there are a number of organizations that supply merchandising services to support retail outlets with general stock replenishment and merchandising support in new stores. By doing this, retail stores have been able to substantially reduce the number of employees needed to run the store.

While stocking shelves and building displays is often done when the product is delivered, it is increasingly a separate activity from delivering the product. In grocery stores, for example, almost all products delivered directly to the store from a manufacturer or wholesaler will be stocked by the manufacturer's/wholesaler's employee who is a full-time merchandiser. Product categories where this is common are Beverage (all types, alcoholic and non-alcoholic), packaged baked goods (bread and pastries), magazines and books, and health and beauty products. For major food manufacturers in the beverage and baked goods industries, their merchandisers are often the single largest employee group within the company. For nationwide branded goods manufacturers such as The Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo, their respective merchandiser work forces number in the thousands.

In marketing, one of the definitions of merchandising is the practice in which the brand or image from one product or service is used to sell another. Trademarked brand names, logos, or character images are licensed to manufacturers of products such as toys or clothing, which then make items in or emblazoned with the image of the license, hoping they'll sell better than the same item with no such image.[1] For the owners of the IP (intellectual property) in question, merchandising is a very popular source of revenue, due to the low cost of letting a third party manufacture the merchandise, while the IP owners collect the merchandising fees.

Merchandising for children is most prominently seen in connection with films and videogames, usually those in current release and with television shows oriented towards children.

Merchandising, especially in connection with child-oriented films and TV shows, often consists of toys made in the likeness of the show's characters (action figures) or items which they use. However, sometimes it can be the other way around, with the show written to include the toys, as advertising for the merchandise. The first major example of this was the TV show "G.I. JOE A Real American Hero.," produced by Hasbro in the early 1980s, but this practice has been common in children's broadcasting ever since.

Sometimes merchandising from a television show can grow far beyond the original show, even lasting decades after the show has largely disappeared from popularity. In other cases, large amounts of merchandise can be generated from a pitifully small amount of source material (Mashimaro).

The most common adult-oriented merchandising is that related to professional sports teams (and their players).

A smaller niche in merchandising is the marketing of more adult-oriented products in connection with similarly adult-oriented films and TV shows. This is common especially with the science fiction and horror genres. (Example: McFarlane Toys) Occasionally, shows which were intended more for children find a following among adults, and you can see a bit of a crossover, with products from that show oriented towards both adults and children. (Gundam model kits) An early example of this phenomenon was the cartoon character Little Lulu, who became licensed to products for adults, such as Kleenex facial tissue.[2]

Sometimes a brand of non-media products can achieve enough recognition and respect that simply putting its name or images on a completely unrelated item can sell that item. (An example would be Harley-Davidson branded clothing.)


what is an adaptation of a cave dwelling animal

Troglobites typically have evolutionary adaptations to cave life. Examples of such adaptations include slow metabolism, reduced energy consumption, better food usage efficiency, decrease or loss of eyesight (anophthalmia), and depigmentation (absence of pigment in the integument). Conversely, as opposed to lost or reduced functions, many species have evolved elongated antennal and locomotory appendages, in order to better move around and respond to environmental stimuli. These structures are also full of chemical, tactile and humidity receptors. Troglobites commonly do not survive well outside caves and, therefore, cannot travel between separate cave systems. As a result, many troglobiotic species are endemic to a single cave or system of caves.[2][3][4][5]

List of troglobites

A troglobite (or, formally, troglobiont) is an animal species, or population of a species, strictly bound to underground habitats such as caves. These are separate from species that mainly live in aboveground habitats but are also able to live underground (eutroglophiles), and species that only are cave visitors (subtroglophiles and trogloxenes).[1] In general, troglobite is referred to troglofauna (the land dwelling underground species), but it may be referred to stygofauna (the aquatic species), although for these animals the term stygobite is preferable.

Not all cave dwelling species are considered to be troglobite. An animal found out in underground environment may be a troglophile (a species living both in subterranean and in epigean habitats, e.g. bats and cave swallows) or a trogloxene (a species only occurring sporadically in a hypogean habitat and unable to establish a subterranean population).[1]

See Cave insects

There are no known mammals that live exclusively in caves. Most bats sleep in caves during the day and hunt at night, but they are considered troglophiles or trogloxenes. However some fossorials which spend their whole lives underground might be considered subterranean fauna, although they are not true troglofauna as they do not live in caves.


who is the richest person in south carolina

As of May 2018, she is the 629th richest person in the world, and the 215th richest in the US, with an estimated wealth of US $3.7 billion.[8] She is the only billionaire living in South Carolina.[9] She has three children: Jonathan Zucker, Andrea Muzin and Jeffrey Zucker. She lives in Charleston, South Carolina.[1]

Anita Zucker

Anita Zucker (born c. 1952) is an American billionaire businesswoman and philanthropist. She is the first, and as of 2013[update] only, woman to have held the position of governor (chair) of the Hudson's Bay Company.

Born Anita Goldberg,[2] Zucker is the daughter of Holocaust survivors, Rose and Carl Goldberg.[3] [4] She graduated from the University of Florida and received a Masters of Arts from the University of North Florida.[1]

After moving with her husband Jerry to the Charleston area in 1978, the couple launched InterTech in 1982.[4]

She is the widow of the chief executive officer of the Hudson's Bay Company, Jerry Zucker, taking over following her husband's death in 2008 from a brain tumor.[5][6]

She owns the Carolina Ice Palace and is part owner of the South Carolina Stingrays ice hockey team.[1][7]

A member of the Republican Party, she endorsed Mitt Romney in January 2012.[1]

She is on the board of the Coastal Community Foundation and Trident United Way, and is a trustee of the Saul Alexander Foundation and the Jewish Endowment Fund.[10] She has served on the boards of the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce, the MUSC Foundation, and Porter-Gaud School.[10]

In November 2014, she donated $4 million to The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina for education programs. In return, The Citadel named its School of Education for the Zucker family, the first of The Citadel's five schools to be named for a major donor.[11]

She was married to Jerry Zucker, until his death, and they had three children, Jonathan Zucker, Andrea Muzin and Jeffrey Zucker. Jonathan is the president of the InterTech Group.[12] She lives in Charleston, South Carolina.[1]


who sang it's a wonderful life song

"Wonderful Life" is a song by the English singer Black from his 1986 album of the same name. It was released twice as a single and was successful the second time, becoming a top ten hit in Switzerland, Germany, the UK, France, Austria, the Netherlands and Italy. Black, who wrote the song while broke, commented: "I was really being ironic... Most people took it at face value."[1]

Wonderful Life (Black song)

First released in 1986 by Ugly Man Records, it initially peaked at no. 72 on the UK Singles Chart.[2] The band then decided to re-release the song with a new record company, A&M Records after the success of "Sweetest Smile". The single then reached a higher peak of no. 8 on the UK Singles Chart in August 1987.[3]

The song was described by AllMusic as a "seductive, bittersweet ballad".[4] The Daily Telegraph said, "Its oddly uplifting lyrics... combined with Black's melancholy croon created, as one critic observed, 'luxuriantly melodic pop that sounds something like a male version of Sade'."[5]

The music video was shot in black and white around the English seaside resort of Southport, Merseyside, as well as Wallasey near Black's hometown of Liverpool, and features New Brighton Lighthouse and promenade. The video includes the Looping Star rollercoaster, a ride at Pleasureland at the time, as well as The Galleon fairground ride, the shrimping boat, local shops and residents.[6] It was directed by Gerard De Thame, husband of television presenter Rachel De Thame, and won an award at the New York Film Festival in 1988.[7]

7" single

12" maxi single

*sales figures based on certification alone
^shipments figures based on certification alone

Dutch singer Mathilde Santing recorded her own cover version of "Wonderful Life" on her 1999 album To Others to One. It was released as a maxi single and was used in a television advertisement for Interpolis, a Dutch insurance company.[29] In addition to the album To Others to One, it is also on the albums 20 jaar hits 1981â€“2001 (Muziek 20 Daagse 2001) and 100 Love Songs [2008].

British singer Tina Cousins recorded a cover version of the song for her second studio album Mastermind. This version had moderate success, peaking at number 17 on the Australian Singles Chart and at number 58 on the UK Singles Chart. In 2005, a dance and a ballad of this cover version were used in the Australian miniseries "The Incredible Journey of Mary Bryant" on Channel 10. Since 2007, both the dance and ballad versions of Tina Cousins' cover of the song have been used at the Hoyts cinemas in Australia directly prior to the start of a movie. Now only the ballad version is used.[citation needed] In 2008, this song featured in an UN TV spot ad raising awareness of Human Trafficking.

Macedonian alternative rock band Arhangel recorded a version of the song for their 1993 album Arhangel 2. Serbian punk rock band KBO! recorded a version of the song on their 2001 cover album (Ne) Menjajte Stanicu ((Do Not) Change the Station). Spanish singer Rosa López recorded a Spanish cover of the song entitled "Bella Vida" on her 2008 album Promesas. It was also released as the second single from the album. In 2009, German techno group Scooter sampled the song on their single "The Sound Above My Hair". In 2011, Kim Wilde covered the song in the album Snapshots. The same year, the song featured on the Christmas album Funny Looking Angels by Smith & Burrows, a collaboration between Tom Smith (Editors) and Andy Burrows (We Are Scientists and ex-Razorlight).[35] Slow Moving Millie covered the song on her album Renditions.

Various other cover versions have been produced, by artists including Seeed, TJ Davis, Tony Hadley, Giuliano Palma & the Bluebeaters, Ace of Base, Lara Fabian (2004 A Wonderful Life album), Myslovitz, Zucchero, Csézy, The Hoosiers, Julio Iglesias, Jr., Perturbazione, Rob de Nijs, Kirka, Saule, Perry Rose, Kate Ryan, and Stefan Gruenwald, Lokee & Pearl Andersson in 2016, after Colin's death.

A version by Katie Melua was originally included on the BBC Radio 2's Sounds of the 80s compilation album, and was subsequently released as a single in aid of Great Ormond Street Hospital and The Children's Hospital Charity.[36]


maximum level up to which slr can be maintained

This percentage is fixed by the Reserve Bank of India. The maximum limit for the SLR was 40% in India.[when?][3] Following the amendment of the Banking regulation Act (1949) in January 2017, the floor rate of 20.75% for SLR was removed. Presently,[when?] the SLR is 19.5%.

Statutory liquidity ratio

Statutory liquidity ratio (SLR) is the Indian government term for the reserve requirement that the commercial banks in India are required to maintain in the form of cash, gold reserves, government approved securities before providing credit to the customers. Statutory liquidity ratio is determined by Reserve Bank of India maintained by banks in order to control the expansion of bank credit.

The SLR is determined by a percentage of total demand and time liabilities. Time liabilities refer to the liabilities which the commercial banks are liable to pay to the customers after a certain period mutually agreed upon, and demand liabilities are such deposits of the customers which are payable on demand. An example of time liability is a six month fixed deposit which is not payable on demand but only after six months. An example of demand liability is a deposit maintained in a saving account or current account that is payable on demand through a withdrawal form such as a cheque.

The SLR is commonly used to control inflation and fuel growth, by increasing or decreasing it respectively. This counter acts by decreasing or increasing the money supply in the system respectively. Indian banks’ holdings of government securities are now close to the statutory minimum that banks are required to hold to comply with existing regulation. When measured in rupees, such holdings decreased for the first time in a little less than 40 years (since the nationalisation of banks in 1969) in 2005–06. Currently[when?] it is 19.5 percent.

SLR is used by bankers and indicates the minimum percentage of deposits that the bank has to maintain in form of gold, cash or other approved securities. Thus, we can say that it is ratio of cash and some other approved liability (deposits). It regulates the credit growth in India.

The liabilities that the banks are liable to pay within one month's time, due to completion of maturity period, are also considered as time liabilities. The maximum limit of SLR is 40% and minimum limit of SLR is 0 In India, Reserve Bank of India always determines the percentage of SLR.

There are some statutory requirements for temporarily placing the money in government bonds. Following this requirement, Reserve Bank of India fixes the level of SLR. However, as most banks currently keep an SLR higher than required (>26%) due to lack of credible lending options, near term reductions are unlikely to increase liquidity and are more symbolic.[1][2]

The SLR is fixed for a number of reasons. The chief driving force is increasing or decreasing liquidity which can result in a desired outcome. A few uses of mandating SLR are:

If any Indian bank fails to maintain the required level of the statutory liquidity ratio, then it becomes liable to pay penalty to Reserve Bank of India. The defaulter bank pays penal interest at the rate of 3% per annum above the bank rate, on the shortfall amount for that particular day. However, according to the Circular released by the Department of Banking Operations and Development, Reserve Bank of India, if the defaulter bank continues to default on the next working day, then the rate of penal interest can be increased to 5% per annum above the bank rate. This restriction is imposed by RBI on banks to make funds available to customers on demand as soon as possible. Gold and government securities (or gilts) are included along with cash because they are highly liquid and safe assets.

The RBI can increase the SLR to control inflation, suck liquidity in the market, to tighten the measure to safeguard the customers' money. Decrease in SLR rate is done to encourage growth. In a growing economy banks would like to invest in stock market, not in government securities or gold as the latter would yield less returns. One more reason is long term government securities (or any bond) are sensitive to interest rate changes. However, in an emerging economy, interest rate change is a common activity.

The quantum is specified as some percentage of the total demand and time liabilities ( i.e. the liabilities of the bank which are payable on demand anytime, and those liabilities which are accruing in one months time due to maturity) of a bank.

SLR rate = (liquid assets / (demand + time liabilities)) Ã— 100%


what part of the cow is kobe beef

In the late 19th century, native Japanese cattle were interbred with European breeds, including Brown Swiss, Shorthorn, and Devon.[citation needed] The cattle originally recognized in 1943 as "Kobe beef" were cattle from herds in the Kobe area of Japan, and could be any of four breeds of Wagyu cattleâ€”Akaushi (Japanese Red/Brown), Kuroushi (Japanese Black), Japanese Polled, and Japanese Shorthorn.[5] Tajima is a strain of the Japanese Black, the most populous breed (around 90% of the four breeds).[6][7]

Kobe beef

Kobe beef (神戸ビーフ, Kōbe bīfu) refers to beef from the Tajima strain of Wagyu cattle, raised in Japan's Hyogo Prefecture according to rules as set out by the Kobe Beef Marketing and Distribution Promotion Association.[1] The meat is a delicacy renowned for its flavor, tenderness, and fatty, well-marbled texture. Kobe beef can be prepared as steak, sukiyaki, shabu shabu, sashimi, and teppanyaki. Kobe beef is generally considered one of the three top brands (known as Sandai Wagyuu, "the three big beefs"), along with Matsusaka beef and Ōmi beef or Yonezawa beef.

Kobe beef is also called Kobe niku (神戸肉, "Kobe meat"), Kobe-gyu (神戸牛) or Kobe-ushi (神戸牛, "Kobe cattle") in Japanese.[1]

Cattle were introduced in Japan in the second century as work animals used for rice cultivation. Because of Japan's "difficult terrain and sparse arable land" due in part to its mountainous topography,[2] cattle were bred in small, isolated regions, yielding herds with unique qualities in their meat.[3]

After the Meiji Restoration, beef consumption remained low, but it has steadily increased since the end of World War II. Kobe beef grew in popularity and extended its global reach in the 1980s and 1990s.[4]

In 1983, the Kobe Beef Marketing and Distribution Promotion Association was formed to define and promote the Kobe trademark. It sets standards for animals to be labeled as Kobe beef.[8]

In 2009, the USDA placed a ban on the import of all Japanese beef to prevent the Japan foot-and-mouth outbreak from reaching US shores. The ban was relaxed in August, 2012. Shortly thereafter, Kobe beef was imported into the US for the first time.[9]

Kobe beef in Japan is a registered trademark of the Kobe Beef Marketing and Distribution Promotion Association (神戸肉流通推進協議会, Kōbeniku Ryūtsū Suishin Kyōgikai).[10] It must fulfill all the following conditions:[1]

The cattle are fed on grain fodder and brushed sometimes for setting fur.[12][13] The melting point of fat of Kobe beef (Tajima cattle) is lower than common beef fat.[14]

Wagyu beef is much higher in unsaturated fat. It has high levels of oleic acid, the fatty acid in olive and canola oil that has been shown to lower bad LDL cholesterol. Tajima cattle are fattened longer, living about 26 to 32 months, compared to 18 months for US beef cattle.

Part of the high price is because only about 3,000 head of cattle may qualify as Kobe. In Japan, all cattle, not just those that end up as Kobe beef, can be tracked via a 10-digit number through every step of its entire lifecycle.[citation needed]

Prior to 2012, Kobe beef was not exported. The first exports, in January 2012, were to Macau, then to Hong Kong in July 2012.[15] Since then, exports have also been made to the United States, Singapore, Thailand[16] and one chef in Canada.[17]

The increase in popularity of Japanese beef in the United States has led to the creation of "Kobe-style" beef, taken from domestically raised Wagyu crossbred with Angus cattle, to meet the demand. Farms in the United States and Britain have attempted to replicate the Kobe traditions.[18] From the first Wagyu cattle imported in the 1970s, 150 US ranches now raise "tens of thousands of Wagyu cattle".[19]

The meat produced by these cross-breeds is different from the "authentic" Kobe beef, though this is "often by design", due to the perception that American palates do not actually want the richness of Japanese beef and would prefer a more familiar flavor profile.[6] Some US meat producers claim any differences between their less expensive "Kobe-style" beef and true Kobe beef are largely cosmetic.[20] Cuts of US "Kobe-style" beef tend to have darker meat and a bolder flavor.[21]

In Europe, UK grocery retailer Asda, owned by Wal-Mart, introduced Wagyu beef at the end of 2011 under its Butcher’s Selection line using meat from a herd in Yorkshire, "bred from Holstein dairy cows impregnated with Wagyu semen". This not only made the beef more affordable, but it also resulted in less marbled meat more familiar to UK consumers.[2] In June 2014, the German discounter Aldi announced that it was going to introduce Wagyu beef steaks, "with every store receiving a limited number of 50 steaks, priced at a very competitive £6.99 for an 8-oz (225-g) sirloin and rib eye". However, Aldi’s Wagyu beef was sourced from New Zealand, where the exclusively grass-fed cattle are allowed to roam, more in keeping with changing norms around animal welfare (in Japan cattle are "confined in small pens and given much more energy-dense feed").[2]

The proliferation of beef outside Japan marketed as Kobe beef is an issue for Kobe beef farmers. Due to a lack of legal recognition of the Kobe beef trademark in the United States, it is possible to sell meat that is incorrectly labeled as Kobe beef.[22][23] The Kobe Beef Marketing and Distribution Promotion Association planned to publish pamphlets about Kobe beef in foreign languages.[24]

Japan has a Wagyu Beef Export Promotion Committee.[6]


who had a hit with the song hawaii five-0

Hawaii Five-O is an instrumental album by the Ventures. It is named for the popular 1968 television series, and featured the theme song from the series as its title track. It was released in 1969 on Liberty Records LST-8061 and reached #11 on the Billboard Top LP chart, staying for 24 weeks.[2]  The album was certified gold by RIAA on July 21, 1971.[3][4] The popularity of the album was propelled by the hit title track, which reached #4 on the Billboard Pop Singles chart.

Hawaii Five-O (album)


compared to when they were first used one of the key problems with telephone polls is the

In some places many people have only mobile telephones. Because pollsters cannot use automated dialing machines to call mobile phones in the United States (because the phone's owner may be charged for taking a call[27]), these individuals are typically excluded from polling samples. There is concern that, if the subset of the population without cell phones differs markedly from the rest of the population, these differences can skew the results of the poll.[28]

Opinion poll

An opinion poll, often simply referred to as a poll or a survey, is a human research survey of public opinion from a particular sample. Opinion polls are usually designed to represent the opinions of a population by conducting a series of questions and then extrapolating generalities in ratio or within confidence intervals.

The first known example of an opinion poll was a local straw poll conducted by The Aru Pennsylvanian in 1824, showing Andrew Jackson leading John Quincy Adams by 335 votes to 169 in the contest for the United States Presidency. Since Jackson won the popular vote in that state and the whole country, such straw votes gradually became more popular, but they remained local, usually citywide phenomena. In 1916, The Literary Digest embarked on a national survey (partly as a circulation-raising exercise) and correctly predicted Woodrow Wilson's election as president. Mailing out millions of postcards and simply counting the returns, The Literary Digest correctly predicted the victories of Warren Harding in 1920, Calvin Coolidge in 1924, Herbert Hoover in 1928, and Franklin Roosevelt in 1932.

Then, in 1936, its 2.3 million "voters" constituted a huge sample, but they were generally more affluent Americans who tended to have Republican sympathies. The Literary Digest was ignorant of this new bias; the week before election day, it reported that Alf Landon was far more popular than Roosevelt. At the same time, George Gallup conducted a far smaller (but more scientifically based) survey, in which he polled a demographically representative sample. Gallup correctly predicted Roosevelt's landslide victory. The Literary Digest soon went out of business, while polling started to take off.

Elmo Roper was another American pioneer in political forecasting using scientific polls.[1] He predicted the reelection of President Franklin D. Roosevelt three times, in 1936, 1940, and 1944. Louis Harris had been in the field of public opinion since 1947 when he joined the Elmo Roper firm, then later became partner.

In September 1938 Jean Stoetzel, after having met Gallup, created IFOP, the Institut Français d'Opinion Publique, as the first European survey institute in Paris and started political polls in summer 1939 with the question "Why die for Danzig?", looking for popular support or dissent with this question asked by appeasement politician and future collaborationist Marcel Déat.

Gallup launched a subsidiary in the United Kingdom that, almost alone, correctly predicted Labour's victory in the 1945 general election, unlike virtually all other commentators, who expected a victory for the Conservative Party, led by Winston Churchill.

The Allied occupation powers helped to create survey institutes in all of the Western occupation zones of Germany in 1947 and 1948 to better steer denazification. By the 1950s, various types of polling had spread to most democracies.

In long-term perspective, advertising had come under heavy pressure in the early 1930s. The Great Depression forced businesses to drastically cut back on their advertising spending. Layoffs and reductions were common at all agencies. The New Deal furthermore aggressively promoted consumerism, and minimized the value of (or need for) advertising. Historian Jackson Lears argues that "By the late 1930s, though, corporate advertisers had begun a successful counterattack against their critics." They rehabilitated the concept of consumer sovereignty by inventing scientific public opinion polls, and making it the centerpiece of their own market research, as well as the key to understanding politics. George Gallup, the vice president of Young and Rubicam, and numerous other advertising experts, led the way. Moving into the 1940s, the industry played a leading role in the ideological mobilization of the American people for fighting the Nazis and Japanese in World War II. As part of that effort, they redefined the "American Way of Life" in terms of a commitment to free enterprise. "Advertisers," Lears concludes, "played a crucial hegemonic role in creating the consumer culture that dominated post-World War II American society."[2][3]

Opinion polls for many years were maintained through telecommunications or in person-to-person contact. Methods and techniques vary, though they are widely accepted in most areas. Over the years, technological innovations have also influenced survey methods such as the availability of electronic clipboards[4] and Internet based polling. Verbal, ballot, and processed types can be conducted efficiently, contrasted with other types of surveys, systematics, and complicated matrices beyond previous orthodox procedures.[citation needed]

Opinion polling developed into popular applications through popular thought, although response rates for some surveys declined. Also, the following has also led to differentiating results:[1] Some polling organizations, such as Angus Reid Public Opinion, YouGov and Zogby use Internet surveys, where a sample is drawn from a large panel of volunteers, and the results are weighted to reflect the demographics of the population of interest. In contrast, popular web polls draw on whoever wishes to participate, rather than a scientific sample of the population, and are therefore not generally considered professional.

Recently, statistical learning methods have been proposed in order to exploit social media content (such as posts on the micro-blogging platform of Twitter) for modelling and predicting voting intention polls.[5][6]

Polls can be used in the public relations field as well. In the early 1920s, public relation experts described their work as a two-way street. Their job would be to present the misinterpreted interests of large institutions to public. They would also gauge the typically ignored interests of the public through polls.

A benchmark poll is generally the first poll taken in a campaign. It is often taken before a candidate announces their bid for office but sometimes it happens immediately following that announcement after they have had some opportunity to raise funds. This is generally a short and simple survey of likely voters.

A benchmark poll serves a number of purposes for a campaign, whether it is a political campaign or some other type of campaign. First, it gives the candidate a picture of where they stand with the electorate before any campaigning takes place. If the poll is done prior to announcing for office the candidate may use the poll to decide whether or not they should even run for office. Secondly, it shows them where their weaknesses and strengths are in two main areas. The first is the electorate. A benchmark poll shows them what types of voters they are sure to win, those they are sure to lose, and everyone in-between these two extremes. This lets the campaign know which voters are persuadable so they can spend their limited resources in the most effective manner. Second, it can give them an idea of what messages, ideas, or slogans are the strongest with the electorate.[7]

Brushfire polls are polls taken during the period between the benchmark poll and tracking polls. The number of brushfire polls taken by a campaign is determined by how competitive the race is and how much money the campaign has to spend. These polls usually focus on likely voters and the length of the survey varies on the number of messages being tested.

Brushfire polls are used for a number of purposes. First, it lets the candidate know if they have made any progress on the ballot, how much progress has been made, and in what demographics they have been making or losing ground. Secondly, it is a way for the campaign to test a variety of messages, both positive and negative, on themselves and their opponent(s). This lets the campaign know what messages work best with certain demographics and what messages should be avoided. Campaigns often use these polls to test possible attack messages that their opponent may use and potential responses to those attacks. The campaign can then spend some time preparing an effective response to any likely attacks. Thirdly, this kind of poll can be used by candidates or political parties to convince primary challengers to drop out of a race and support a stronger candidate.

A tracking poll or rolling poll is a poll in which responses are obtained in a number of consecutive periods, for instance daily, and then results are calculated using a moving average of the responses that were gathered over a fixed number of the most recent periods, for example the past five days.[8] In this example, the next calculated results will use data for five days counting backwards from the next day, namely the same data as before, but with the data from the next day included, and without the data from the sixth day before that day.

Over time, a number of theories and mechanisms have been offered to explain erroneous polling results. Some of these reflect errors on the part of the pollsters; many of them are statistical in nature. Others blame the respondents for not giving candid answers (e.g., the Bradley effect, the Shy Tory Factor); these can be more controversial.

Polls based on samples of populations are subject to sampling error which reflects the effects of chance and uncertainty in the sampling process. Sampling polls rely on the law of large numbers to measure the opinions of the whole population based only on a subset, and for this purpose the absolute size of the sample is important, but the percentage of the whole population is not important (unless it happens to be close to the sample size). The possible difference between the sample and whole population is often expressed as a margin of error - usually defined as the radius of a 95% confidence interval for a particular statistic. One example is the percent of people who prefer product A versus product B. When a single, global margin of error is reported for a survey, it refers to the maximum margin of error for all reported percentages using the full sample from the survey. If the statistic is a percentage, this maximum margin of error can be calculated as the radius of the confidence interval for a reported percentage of 50%. Others suggest that a poll with a random sample of 1,000 people has margin of sampling error of Â±3% for the estimated percentage of the whole population.

A 3% margin of error means that if the same procedure is used a large number of times, 95% of the time the true population average will be within the sample estimate plus or minus 3%. The margin of error can be reduced by using a larger sample, however if a pollster wishes to reduce the margin of error to 1% they would need a sample of around 10,000 people.[9] In practice, pollsters need to balance the cost of a large sample against the reduction in sampling error and a sample size of around 500â€“1,000 is a typical compromise for political polls. (Note that to get complete responses it may be necessary to include thousands of additional participators.)[10][11]

Another way to reduce the margin of error is to rely on poll averages. This makes the assumption that the procedure is similar enough between many different polls and uses the sample size of each poll to create a polling average.[12] An example of a polling average can be found here: 2008 Presidential Election polling average. Another source of error stems from faulty demographic models by pollsters who weigh their samples by particular variables such as party identification in an election. For example, if you assume that the breakdown of the US population by party identification has not changed since the previous presidential election, you may underestimate a victory or a defeat of a particular party candidate that saw a surge or decline in its party registration relative to the previous presidential election cycle.

A caution is that an estimate of a trend is subject to a larger error than an estimate of a level. This is because if one estimates the change, the difference between two numbers X and Y, then one has to contend with errors in both X and Y. A rough guide is that if the change in measurement falls outside the margin of error it is worth attention.

Since some people do not answer calls from strangers, or refuse to the answer the poll, poll samples may not be representative samples from a population due to a non-response bias. Response rates have been declining, and are down to about 10% in recent years.[13] Because of this selection bias, the characteristics of those who agree to be interviewed may be markedly different from those who decline. That is, the actual sample is a biased version of the universe the pollster wants to analyze. In these cases, bias introduces new errors, one way or the other, that are in addition to errors caused by sample size. Error due to bias does not become smaller with larger sample sizes, because taking a larger sample size simply repeats the same mistake on a larger scale. If the people who refuse to answer, or are never reached, have the same characteristics as the people who do answer, then the final results should be unbiased. If the people who do not answer have different opinions then there is bias in the results. In terms of election polls, studies suggest that bias effects are small, but each polling firm has its own techniques for adjusting weights to minimize selection bias.[14][15]

Survey results may be affected by response bias, where the answers given by respondents do not reflect their true beliefs. This may be deliberately engineered by unscrupulous pollsters in order to generate a certain result or please their clients, but more often is a result of the detailed wording or ordering of questions (see below). Respondents may deliberately try to manipulate the outcome of a poll by e.g. advocating a more extreme position than they actually hold in order to boost their side of the argument or give rapid and ill-considered answers in order to hasten the end of their questioning. Respondents may also feel under social pressure not to give an unpopular answer. For example, respondents might be unwilling to admit to unpopular attitudes like racism or sexism, and thus polls might not reflect the true incidence of these attitudes in the population. In American political parlance, this phenomenon is often referred to as the Bradley effect. If the results of surveys are widely publicized this effect may be magnified - a phenomenon commonly referred to as the spiral of silence.

Use of the plurality voting system (select only one candidate) in a poll puts an unintentional bias into the poll, since people who favor more than one candidate cannot indicate this. The fact that they must choose only one candidate biases the poll, causing it to favor the candidate most different from the others while it disfavors candidates who are similar to other candidates. The plurality voting system also biases elections in the same way.

Some people responding may not understand the words being used, but may wish to avoid the embarrassment of admitting this, or the poll mechanism may not allow clarification, so they may make an arbitrary choice. Some percentage of people also answer whimsically or out of annoyance at being polled. This results in perhaps 4% of Americans reporting they have personally been decapitated[16] or that "lizardmen are running the Earth".[17]

It is well established that the wording of the questions, the order in which they are asked and the number and form of alternative answers offered can influence results of polls. For instance, the public is more likely to indicate support for a person who is described by the operator as one of the "leading candidates". This support itself overrides subtle bias for one candidate, as does lumping some candidates in an "other" category or vice versa. Thus comparisons between polls often boil down to the wording of the question. On some issues, question wording can result in quite pronounced differences between surveys.[18][19] This can also, however, be a result of legitimately conflicted feelings or evolving attitudes, rather than a poorly constructed survey.[20]

A common technique to control for this bias is to rotate the order in which questions are asked. Many pollsters also split-sample. This involves having two different versions of a question, with each version presented to half the respondents.

The most effective controls, used by attitude researchers, are:

These controls are not widely used in the polling industry.[why?]. However, as it is important that questions to test the product have a high quality, survey methodologists work on methods to test them. Empirical tests provide insight into the quality of the questionnaire, some may be more complex than others. For instance, testing a questionnaire can be done by:

One of the criticisms of opinion polls is that societal assumptions that opinions between which there is no logical link are "correlated attitudes" can push people with one opinion into a group that forces them to pretend to have a supposedly linked but actually unrelated opinion. That, in turn, may cause people who have the first opinion to claim on polls that they have the second opinion without having it, causing opinion polls to become part of self-fulfilling prophecy problems. It have been suggested that attempts to counteract unethical opinions by condemning supposedly linked opinions may favor the groups that promote the actually unethical opinions by forcing people with supposedly linked opinions into them by ostracism elsewhere in society making such efforts counterproductive, that not being sent between groups that assume ulterior motives from each other and not being allowed to express consistent critical thought anywhere may create psychological stress because humans are sapient, and that discussion spaces free from assumptions of ulterior motives behind specific opinions should be created. In this context, rejection of the assumption that opinion polls show actual links between opinions is considered important.[25][26]

Another source of error is the use of samples that are not representative of the population as a consequence of the methodology used, as was the experience of The Literary Digest in 1936. For example, telephone sampling has a built-in error because in many times and places, those with telephones have generally been richer than those without.

Polling organizations have developed many weighting techniques to help overcome these deficiencies, with varying degrees of success. Studies of mobile phone users by the Pew Research Center in the US, in 2007, concluded that "cell-only respondents are different from landline respondents in important ways, (but) they were neither numerous enough nor different enough on the questions we examined to produce a significant change in overall general population survey estimates when included with the landline samples and weighted according to US Census parameters on basic demographic characteristics."[29]

This issue was first identified in 2004,[30] but came to prominence only during the 2008 US presidential election.[31] In previous elections, the proportion of the general population using cell phones was small, but as this proportion has increased, there is concern that polling only landlines is no longer representative of the general population. In 2003, only 2.9% of households were wireless (cellphones only), compared to 12.8% in 2006.[32] This results in "coverage error". Many polling organisations select their sample by dialling random telephone numbers; however, in 2008, there was a clear tendency for polls which included mobile phones in their samples to show a much larger lead for Obama, than polls that did not.[33][34]

The potential sources of bias are:[35]

Some polling companies have attempted to get around that problem by including a "cellphone supplement". There are a number of problems with including cellphones in a telephone poll:

An oft-quoted example of opinion polls succumbing to errors occurred during the 1992 UK general election. Despite the polling organizations using different methodologies, virtually all the polls taken before the vote, and to a lesser extent, exit polls taken on voting day, showed a lead for the opposition Labour party, but the actual vote gave a clear victory to the ruling Conservative party.

In their deliberations after this embarrassment the pollsters advanced several ideas to account for their errors, including:

The Shy Tory FactorÂ

The relative importance of these factors was, and remains, a matter of controversy, but since then the polling organizations have adjusted their methodologies and have achieved more accurate results in subsequent election campaigns.[citation needed]

A comprehensive discussion of these biases and how they should be understood and mitigated is included in several sources including Dillman and Salant (1994).[36]

A widely publicized failure of opinion polling to date in the United States was the prediction that Thomas Dewey would defeat Harry S. Truman in the 1948 US presidential election. Major polling organizations, including Gallup and Roper, indicated a landslide victory for Dewey.

It was widely predicted that Donald Trump would lose the 2016 US presidential election to Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; however, Donald Trump was elected the 45th President of the United States and was inaugurated on January 20, 2017. Many publications, such as FiveThirtyEight,[37] predicted that there was a significant chance of the Trump winning.

In the United Kingdom, most polls failed to predict the Conservative election victories of 1970 and 1992, and Labour's victory in 1974. However, their figures at other elections have been generally accurate. In the 2015 election virtually every poll predicted a hung parliament with Labour and the Conservatives neck and neck when the actual result was a clear Conservative majority. On the other hand, in 2017, the opposite appears to have occurred. Most polls predicted a Conservative landslide, even though in reality the election resulted in a hung parliament with the Conservatives losing their majority.

Social media today is a popular medium for the candidates to campaign and for gauging the public reaction to the campaigns. Social media can also be used as an indicator of the voter opinion regarding the poll. Some research studies have shown that predictions made using social media signals can match traditional opinion polls.[5][6]

Recently, concerning the 2016 U.S. presidential election, a major concern has been that of the effect of false stories spreading throughout social media. Recent evidence shows that social media plays a huge role in the supplying of news: 62 percent of US adults get news on social media.[38] This fact makes the issue of fake news being spread throughout it more influential. Other evidence surrounding fake news shows that: the most popular fake news stories were more widely shared on Facebook than the most popular mainstream news stories; many people who see fake news stories report that they believe them; and the most discussed fake news stories tended to favor Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton. As a result of these facts, some have concluded that if not for these stories, Donald Trump may not have won the election over Hillary Clinton.[39]

By providing information about voting intentions, opinion polls can sometimes influence the behavior of electors, and in his book The Broken Compass, Peter Hitchens asserts that opinion polls are actually a device for influencing public opinion.[40] The various theories about how this happens can be split into two groups: bandwagon/underdog effects, and strategic ("tactical") voting.

A bandwagon effect occurs when the poll prompts voters to back the candidate shown to be winning in the poll. The idea that voters are susceptible to such effects is old, stemming at least from 1884; William Safire reported that the term was first used in a political cartoon in the magazine Puck in that year.[41] It has also remained persistent in spite of a lack of empirical corroboration until the late 20th century. George Gallup spent much effort in vain trying to discredit this theory in his time by presenting empirical research. A recent meta-study of scientific research on this topic indicates that from the 1980s onward the Bandwagon effect is found more often by researchers.[42]

The opposite of the bandwagon effect is the underdog effect. It is often mentioned in the media. This occurs when people vote, out of sympathy, for the party perceived to be "losing" the elections. There is less empirical evidence for the existence of this effect than there is for the existence of the bandwagon effect.[42]

The second category of theories on how polls directly affect voting is called strategic or tactical voting. This theory is based on the idea that voters view the act of voting as a means of selecting a government. Thus they will sometimes not choose the candidate they prefer on ground of ideology or sympathy, but another, less-preferred, candidate from strategic considerations. An example can be found in the United Kingdom general election, 1997. As he was then a Cabinet Minister, Michael Portillo's constituency of Enfield Southgate was believed to be a safe seat but opinion polls showed the Labour candidate Stephen Twigg steadily gaining support, which may have prompted undecided voters or supporters of other parties to support Twigg in order to remove Portillo. Another example is the boomerang effect where the likely supporters of the candidate shown to be winning feel that chances are slim and that their vote is not required, thus allowing another candidate to win.

In addition, Mark Pickup in Cameron Anderson and Laura Stephenson's "Voting Behaviour in Canada" outlines three additional "behavioural" responses that voters may exhibit when faced with polling data.

The first is known as a "cue taking" effect which holds that poll data is used as a "proxy" for information about the candidates or parties. Cue taking is "based on the psychological phenomenon of using heuristics to simplify a complex decision" (243).[43]

The second, first described by Petty and Cacioppo (1996) is known as "cognitive response" theory. This theory asserts that a voter's response to a poll may not line with their initial conception of the electoral reality. In response, the voter is likely to generate a "mental list" in which they create reasons for a party's loss or gain in the polls. This can reinforce or change their opinion of the candidate and thus affect voting behaviour.

Third, the final possibility is a "behavioural response" which is similar to a cognitive response. The only salient difference is that a voter will go and seek new information to form their "mental list", thus becoming more informed of the election. This may then affect voting behaviour.

These effects indicate how opinion polls can directly affect political choices of the electorate. But directly or indirectly, other effects can be surveyed and analyzed on all political parties. The form of media framing and party ideology shifts must also be taken under consideration. Opinion polling in some instances is a measure of cognitive bias, which is variably considered and handled appropriately in its various applications.

Starting in the 1980s, tracking polls and related technologies began having a notable impact on U.S. political leaders.[44] According to Douglas Bailey, a Republican who had helped run Gerald Ford's 1976 presidential campaign, "It's no longer necessary for a political candidate to guess what an audience thinks. He can [find out] with a nightly tracking poll. So it's no longer likely that political leaders are going to lead. Instead, they're going to follow."[44]

Some jurisdictions over the world restrict the publication of the results of opinion polls, especially during the period around an election, in order to prevent the possibly erroneous results from affecting voters' decisions. For instance, in Canada, it is prohibited to publish the results of opinion surveys that would identify specific political parties or candidates in the final three days before a poll closes.[45]

However, most western democratic nations don't support the entire prohibition of the publication of pre-election opinion polls; most of them have no regulation and some only prohibit it in the final days or hours until the relevant poll closes.[46] A survey by Canada's Royal Commission on Electoral Reform reported that the prohibition period of publication of the survey results largely differed in different countries. Out of the 20 countries examined, 3 prohibit the publication during the entire period of campaigns, while others prohibit it for a shorter term such as the polling period or the final 48 hours before a poll closes.[45] In India, the Election Commission has prohibited it in the 48 hours before the start of polling.


who won the women's doubles in miami

Ashleigh Barty and CoCo Vandeweghe won the title, defeating Barbora Krejčíková and Kateřina Siniaková in the final, 6–2, 6–1.

2018 Miami Open – Women's Doubles

Gabriela Dabrowski and Xu Yifan were the defending champions, but lost in the first round to Elise Mertens and Demi Schuurs.


what do the numbers on signal hill in calgary mean

Battalion Park, located on the hillside of Signal Hill, overlooks the Sarcee Nation. The area was a military reserve prior to World War I for the Canadian Forces. The hill features 16,000 stones hauled by soldiers and arranged to form four numbers (137, 113, 151 and 51). The numbers correspond to the four battalions of the Canadian Expeditionary Force who trained in that area before leaving to fight in World War 1. Battalion Park officially opened on November 3, 1991.[6]

Signal Hill, Calgary

Signal Hill is a community in Calgary, Alberta. It contains the residential neighbourhoods of Sienna Hills and Signal Ridge. It is bounded by Sarcee Trail to the east, 17th Ave to the north, Glenmore Trail to the south and the community of Springbank Hill to the west.

Battalion Park is established on the southern slopes of the hill and the shopping centres at Westhills Towne Centre, Signal Hill Centre, Westmarket Square and Signature Park Plaza serve the community. Located in the Signal Hill Centre area is a public library called Signal Hill, which serves the surrounding community.[3]

The land was annexed to the City of Calgary in 1956, and Signal Hill was established in 1986. It is represented in the Calgary City Council by the Ward 6 councillor Richard Pootmans,[1] on a provincial level by Calgary West MLA Mike Ellis, and at federal level by Calgary Signal Hill MP Ron Liepert.

In the City of Calgary's 2012 municipal census, Signal Hill had a population of 7004139140000000000♠13,914 living in 7003525300000000000♠5,253 dwellings, a 0.9% increase from its 2011 population of 7004137950000000000♠13,795.[2] With a land area of 5.6 km2 (2.2 sq mi), it had a population density of 2,485/km2 (6,440/sq mi) in 2012.[2][4]

Signal Hill is a wealthy neighbourhood, with the median household income of $205,844 (2013). The wealthier residents ($200,000-$400,000 median household income) live in Upper Signal hill, which is located on the top of the hill, above the first few rows of houses which are located above the famous Signal Hill numbers. The entrance to this area can be found along Signal Hill Drive.[5] As of 2006, 4% of the residents were immigrants.

Signal Hill is home to the Battalion Park School. Operated by the Calgary Board of Education, the school serves students in kindergarten through grade six. In September 2012, it had an enrollment of 694 students drawn from Signal Hill and the nearby Richmond Hill and Springbank Hill communities.[7]


what is the climate in the blue mountains

The climate varies with elevation. At Katoomba, (1,010 m or 3,314 ft) the summer average maximum temperature is around 22 °C with a few days extending into the 30s (80s–90s °F) although it is quite common to see maximum temperatures stay in the teens when east coast troughs persist. Night-time temperatures are usually in the teens but can drop to single figures at times. During winter, the temperature is typically around 10 to 11 °C in the daytime with −1 °C or so on clear nights and 3 to 4 °C on cloudy nights. Very occasionally it will get down to −3 °C or slightly lower but usually the coldest air drains into the valleys during calm, clear nights. The Blue Mountains is not known for particularly cold mornings compared to other areas on the Central Tablelands, such as Oberon, Bathurst and Orange. There are two to three snowfalls per year, although settled snow has become less common in recent decades. In the lower mountains, however, the climate is significantly warmer.

Blue Mountains (New South Wales)

The Blue Mountains are a mountainous region and a mountain range located in New South Wales, Australia. The region borders on Sydney's metropolitan area, its foothills starting about 50 kilometres (31Â mi) west of the state capital.[4] The public's understanding of the extent of the Blue Mountains is varied, as it forms only part of an extensive mountainous area associated with the Great Dividing Range. Officially the Blue Mountains region is bounded by the Nepean and Hawkesbury rivers in the east, the Coxs River and Lake Burragorang to the west and south, and the Wolgan and Colo rivers to the north.[5] Geologically, it is situated in the central parts of the Sydney Basin.[6]

The Blue Mountains Range comprises a range of mountains,  plateau escarpments extending off the Great Dividing Range about 4.8 kilometres (3.0 mi) northwest of Wolgan Gap in a generally southeasterly direction for about 96 kilometres (60 mi), terminating at Emu Plains. For about two-thirds of its length it is traversed by the Great Western Highway and the Main Western railway line. Several established towns are situated on its heights, including Katoomba, Blackheath, Mount Victoria, and Springwood. The range forms the watershed between Coxs River to the south and the Grose and Wolgan rivers to the north.[3] The range contains the Explorer Range and the Bell Range.[7]

The Blue Mountains area includes the local government areas of the City of Blue Mountains, the City of Hawkesbury, the City of Lithgow, Wollondilly Shire and Oberon Shire.

Following European settlement of the Sydney area, the area was named the Carmarthen and Lansdowne Hills by Arthur Phillip in 1788. The Carmarthen Hills were in the north of the region and the Lansdowne Hills were in the south. The name Blue Mountains, however, was preferred[8] and is derived from the blue tinge the range takes on when viewed from a distance. The tinge is believed to be caused by Mie scattering which occurs when incoming light with shorter wavelengths is preferentially scattered by particles within the atmosphere imparting a blue-greyish colour to any distant objects, including mountains and clouds. Volatile terpenoids emitted in large quantities by the abundant eucalyptus trees in the Blue Mountains may cause Mie scattering and thus the blue haze for which the mountains were named.[9]

When Europeans arrived in Australia, the Blue Mountains had already been inhabited for several millennia by the Gundungurra people, now represented by the Gundungurra Tribal Council Aboriginal Corporation based in Katoomba, and, in the lower Blue Mountains, by the Darug people, now represented by the Darug Tribal Aboriginal Corporation.[10][11]

The Gundungurra creation story of the Blue Mountains tells that Dreamtime creatures Mirigan and Garangatch, half fish and half reptile, fought an epic battle which scarred the landscape into the Jamison Valley.

The Gundungurra Tribal Council is a nonprofit organisation representing the Gundungurra traditional owners, promoting heritage and culture and providing a support for Gundungurra people connecting back to Country.

Gundungurra Tribal Council Aboriginal Corporation has a registered Native Title Claim since 1995 over their traditional lands, which include the Blue Mountains and surrounding areas.

Examples of Aboriginal habitation can be found in many places. In the Red Hands Cave, a rock shelter near Glenbrook, the walls contain hand stencils from adults and children.[12]:170 On the southern side of Queen Elizabeth Drive, at Wentworth Falls, a rocky knoll has a large number of grinding grooves created by rubbing stone implements on the rock to shape and sharpen them. There are also carved images of animal tracks and an occupation cave. The site is known as Kings Tableland Aboriginal Site and dates back 22,000 years.[citation needed]

Arthur Phillip, the first governor of New South Wales, first glimpsed the extent of the Blue Mountains from a ridge at the site of today's Oakhill College, Castle Hill. He named them the Carmarthen Hills, "some forty to sixty miles distant..." and he reckoned that the ground was "most suitable for government stock". This is the location where Gidley King in 1799 established a prison town for political prisoners from Ireland and Scotland.

The first documented use of the name Blue Mountains appears in Captain John Hunter’s account of Phillip’s 1789 expedition up the Hawkesbury River. Describing the events of about 5 July, Hunter wrote: "We frequently, in some of the reaches which we passed through this day, saw very near us the hills, which we suppose as seen from Port Jackson, and called by the governor the Blue Mountains."[13] During the nineteenth century the name was commonly applied to the portion of the Great Dividing Range from about Goulburn in the south to the Hunter Valley in the north, but in time it came to be associated with a more limited area.[14]

The native Aborigines knew two routes[citation needed] across the mountains: Bilpin Ridge, which is now the location of Bells Line of Road between Richmond and Bell, and the Coxs River, a tributary of the Nepean River. It could be followed upstream to the open plains of the Kanimbla Valley, the type of country that farmers prize.

European settlers initially considered that fertile lands lay beyond the mountains, as was China in the belief of many convicts, but that this didn't matter much, since the mountains were impassable.[15] This idea was, to some extent, convenient for local authorities. An "insurmountable" barrier would deter convicts from trying to escape in that direction.

A former convict, John Wilson, may have been the first European to cross the Blue Mountains. It is also believed that Mathew Everingham, 1795,[16] may have also been partly successful based on letters he wrote at the time which came to light in the late 1980s. Wilson arrived with the First Fleet in 1788 and was freed in 1792. He settled in the bush, living with the Aborigines and even functioning as an intermediary between them and the settlers. In 1797 he returned to Sydney, claiming to have explored up to a hundred miles in all directions around Sydney, including across the mountains. His descriptions and observations were generally accurate, and it is possible that he had crossed the mountains via the southern aspect at the Coxs River corridor, guided by the Aborigines.[17]:76â€“77

Governor Hunter was impressed by Wilson's skills and sent him on an expedition with John Price and others in January 1798. The party crossed the Nepean River and moved southwest towards the present site of Mittagong. There they turned west and found a route along the ridge where today the Wombeyan Caves Road is located. In the process they found a way to go west of the mountains, by going around them instead of across them. In March of the same year, Wilson and Price ventured to the Camden area, and then continued further south until they discovered Thirlmere Lakes, finally almost reaching the present site of Goulburn.

It is possible that the accomplishments of this expedition were suppressed by Hunter, who may not have wanted convicts to know that there was a relatively easy way out of Sydney.[17]:83 Wilson was killed by Aborigines after abducting one of their women for his personal use,[18] but he had accomplished much as an explorer. He was never recognised as the first person to cross the mountains, possibly because his Coxs River journey could not be verified, while his route west of Mittagong may have been the "long way around" for a colony that had its eyes fixed on the sandstone fortress west of the Nepean.

Between 1798 and 1813, many people explored various parts of the mountains, from the Bilpin Ridge to the southern regions, today the site of the Kanangra-Boyd National Park. Still, they did not find a definite route across the mountains.
The 1813 crossing of the Blue Mountains by Gregory Blaxland, William Lawson and William Charles Wentworth is officially credited as the first successful European crossing.[19] Blaxland set out with Lawson and Wentworth on 11 May 1813 and succeeded in crossing the mountains by 31 May. They ventured as far as to what is now Mount Blaxland, just west of Coxs River.

In November 1813, Macquarie sent the surveyor George Evans on an expedition to confirm the discoveries made by Blaxland and his party. He was also told to see if there existed enough arable land to justify settlement. The issue had become more urgent because the colony was in the grips of a drought.

Evans and his party reached the Fish and Macquarie rivers, and the site of Bathurst.[20] On 7 July 1814, construction of a road across the mountains was begun by William Cox. The work was at the behest of Governor Macquarie. 30 convict labourers and 8 guards completed the road on 14 January 1815 after 27 weeks of hard work.[17]:145

Since the Blue Mountains are rich in coal and shale, mining for these resources began in Hartley Vale in 1865. J.B. North ran a shale mine in the Jamison Valley in the 19th century,[12]:243 and other operations were set up in several places. Locations for mining activities included the Jamison Valley, the upper Grose Valley, Newnes, Glen Davis and the Asgard Swamp area outside Mount Victoria. Shale mining failed in the long run because it was not financially viable.

Annual rainfall is about 1,050 millimetres (41Â in) in the Upper Blue Mountains[21] with many misty days.

The predominant natural vegetation of the higher ridges is eucalyptus forest. Heath-like vegetation is present on plateau edges above cliffs. The sheltered gorges often contain temperate rainforests. There are also many hanging swamps with button grass reeds and thick, deep black soil. Wollemia nobilis, the "Wollemi pine", a relict of earlier vegetation of Gondwana, is found in remote and isolated valleys of the Wollemi National Park.

The main natural disasters to afflict the area are bush fires and severe storms. In recent years the lower mountains have been subjected to a series of bush fires which have caused great loss of property but relatively little loss of life. The upper mountains had not had a major fire for some decades until December 2002 (the Blackheath Glen Fire) and November 2006 when an extensive blaze in the Grose Valley threatened several communities including Bell and Blackheath (the Lawsons Long Alley Fire). This latest fire burned for almost a month but was extinguished, mainly due to a change in the weather, without loss of human life or property. A program of winter burning seems to have been successful in reducing fires in the upper mountains.

The Blue Mountains Range contains smaller mountain ranges:   the Bell Range near The Bells Line of Road and north of the Grose River; the Explorer Range, south of the Grose River extending west towards Mount Victoria; the Caley Range, Erskine Range, Mount Hay Range, Paterson Range, and the Woodford Range.[22] The major recorded peaks are:[23]

The Blue Mountains are a dissected plateau carved in sandstone bedrock. They are now a series of ridge lines separated by gorges up to 760 metres (2,490 ft) deep. The highest point in the Blue Mountains, as it is now defined, is an unnamed point with an elevation of 1,189 m (3,901 ft) AHD , located 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) north-east of Lithgow. However, the highest point in the broader region that was once considered to be the Blue Mountains is Mount Bindo, with an elevation 1,362 m (4,469 ft) AHD .[14] A large part of the Blue Mountains is incorporated into the Greater Blue Mountains Area World Heritage Site, consisting of seven national park areas and a conservation reserve.[28]

The Blue Mountains area is a distinct physiographic section of the larger Hunter-Hawkesbury Sunkland province. This is in turn a part of the larger East Australian Cordillera physiographic division.

The Greater Blue Mountains Area was unanimously listed as a World Heritage Area by UNESCO on 29 November 2000, becoming the fourth area in New South Wales to be listed.[29] The area totals roughly 10,000 square kilometres (3,900 sq mi), including the Blue Mountains, Kanangra-Boyd, Wollemi, Gardens of Stone, Yengo, Nattai and Thirlmere Lakes National Parks, plus the Jenolan Caves Karst Conservation Reserve.

This site was chosen to be included on the World Heritage list because:

The Greater Blue Mountains Area is inhabited by over 400 different forms of animals. Among them are rare mammal species like spotted-tailed quoll, the koala, the yellow-bellied glider, and long-nosed potoroo. There are also some rare reptiles, like the Blue Mountain water skink.[31] There are also some dingos in the area, which form the top predators and hunt for grey kangaroos.[32]

The Blue Mountains are a popular destination for rock climbers, mountain bikers and hikers as well as canyoning and other adventure sports. These sports are well catered for by guiding companies and equipment stores located mainly in Katoomba.

Popular climbing destinations include the Centennial Glen cliffs near Blackheath, Mount Victoria, Mount Piddington and Mount Boyce. Climbing is currently banned on The Three Sisters.[38]

Mountain biking takes place mainly on the many fire trails that branch away from the main spine of the Great Western Highway, such as Narrow Neck, Anderson's Fire Trail and others.[39][40]

Likewise many of the fire trails are popular with day hikers, though many dedicated walking trails exist away from the fire roads.[41]

Canyoning in the Blue Mountains is a popular sport and caters for various skill levels. It carries inherent dangers, yet for those with the appropriate skills or those looking to take a guided trip there are many great opportunities to experience a different view of the Blue Mountains.

There are numerous abseiling options available in the Blue Mountains including single and multipitch routes. There are some restrictions though with certain areas being closed for abseiling.[42]

Cricket is a popular sport in the Blue Mountains, with the Blue Mountains Cattle Dogs representing the district in the Western Zone Premier League, Country Plate and Presidents Cup competitions.[43]


when is amazon hq2 going to be announced

The deadline for Phase I bids was set at October 19, 2017.[8] A final site is planned to be selected and announced in 2018, from a shortlist of 20 cities released in January.[6][7][3]

Amazon HQ2

Amazon HQ2 is a proposed new corporate headquarters for online retailer and tech company Amazon in North America, to supplement the existing Seattle headquarters. Amazon announced the initiative, along with a request for proposals from governments and economic development organizations, in September 2017, attracting attention from more than 200 cities in Canada, the United States and Mexico.[1] Amazon intends to have 50,000 workers at HQ2 and is planning to invest $5 billion in new construction.[2] A shortlist of 20 finalists was announced January 18, 2018.[3]

Amazon.com was founded in 1994 in Bellevue, Washington, and moved to leased space in the SoDo neighborhood of Seattle. As the company grew, it went through a series of office moves around Downtown Seattle, until announcing a move to a purpose-built headquarters campus in the South Lake Union neighborhood, then a light industrial enclave undergoing urban renewal.[4] As of 2017[update], Amazon occupies 8.1 million square feet (750,000 m2) of office space in 33 buildings, employing 40,000 white collar workers.[5]

Amazon's request for proposals outlined several core requirements, as well as optional preferences.[6]

Optional preferences include airports with direct flights to Seattle, New York City, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., urban locations, and proximity to major universities.[7]

As of OctoberÂ 23, 2017[update], 238 proposals had been submitted and received by Amazon, representing cities and regions from 54 states, provinces, districts, and territories.[9][10][1] The only U.S. states that did not have a locality that submitted a formal proposal were Arkansas, Hawaii, Iowa, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming.[11] The Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Saskatchewan also declined to bid, along with the Yukon Territory.[12]

Sun Corridor, a Tucson, Arizona economic development firm, sent a 21-foot saguaro cactus to Amazon in an attempt to promote the city's bid. The gift was rejected due to the company's corporate gifts policy, instead donating it to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum.[15]

The city of Stonecrest, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, voted to de-annex 345 acres (140Â ha) of land for Amazon to establish its own city named Amazon around its headquarters.[16]

Sly James, mayor of Kansas City, Missouri, purchased 1,000 products from Amazon, which he donated to charity. James wrote 5-star reviews for each one of them, in which every review mentioned positive attributes of Kansas City.[17]

Primanti Brothers, a chain of sandwich shops based in Pittsburgh, offered free sandwiches to Amazon employees if they chose the city as their second headquarters.[17]

The city of Birmingham, Alabama erected several giant Amazon boxes and dash buttons around public areas. The dash buttons sent out pre-generated tweets to lure Amazon to the city.[17]

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that major landmarks in the city would be lit in orange to promote the city's campaign for HQ2.[17]

For one of Canada's many bids, messages hoping to persuade Amazon to move to Calgary were sprayed onto sidewalks in Seattle's South Lake Union neighborhood.[17] During an Ottawa Senators hockey game, fans were encouraged to "make noise" for the city of Ottawa's Amazon bid.[8]

Contrary to other cities, Little Rock, Arkansas, purchased a full-page ad in the Washington Post "breaking up" with Amazon, where they described their decision to not submit a bid, while also touting the city's positive attributes.[18] A few days after the bid deadline, the campaign flew a banner plane over Seattle with the same message.[19]

On January 18, 2018, Amazon announced its shortlist of 20 finalists for the HQ2 bidding process. The list focuses mainly on the East Coast and Midwest, with Los Angeles as the sole West Coast finalist.[3][20] Toronto was the only finalist outside of the United States.[21]

Amazon began tours of its finalist cities in late February. Bidding cities also signed non-disclosure agreements with Amazon for the duration of the bid process.[22][23] NBC News reported in May that visits to the 20 finalists had been finished by Amazon and that it was close to making a decision.[24]

The announcement came as a surprise in Seattle, where Amazon is actively expanding their South Lake Union campus and has 40,000 workers occupying almost 20 percent of the city's office space.[25] Former Seattle Mayor Ed Murray announced that he would begin conversations with Amazon about their long-term plans for the city, while the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce characterized the announcement as a "wake-up call" to improve the city's business climate.[26] Comparisons were made to Boeing's decision to move their corporate headquarters from Seattle to Chicago in 2001, which came as a surprise to the city but ultimately only affected a few hundred corporate jobs.[27]

Moody's Analytics published an analysis of bidding metropolitan areas and determined that Austin, Texas, ranks highest among Amazon's criteria, followed by Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Rochester, New York.[28] The New York Times also completed an analysis which found Denver to be the best site based on Amazon's criteria, followed closely by Boston and Washington D.C.[29] Irish gambling site Paddy Power originally listed Atlanta as the odds on favorite to win HQ2, with 2-to-1 odds [30] but, as of January 2018, lists Atlanta and Austin as sharing 3-to-1 odds of winning Amazon HQ2.[31]

Steven Strauss, a visiting professor of public policy at Princeton University[32] and an expert on economic development,[33] in an editorial in USA Today[34] suggested that metropolitan areas should be cautious about bidding too generously to win the Amazon bid. He points to examples where companies have gone bankrupt and/or not followed up on expansion plans and notes that it is possible cities could over pay (the so-called "winner's curse") by providing an overly generous incentive package that turns out to be a money-losing proposition for the municipality if all the promised jobs don't materialize.

Conservative and liberal advocacy groups voiced their opposition to various tax breaks promised by cities in hopes of luring Amazon.[35]


is australian and american sign language the same

As with other sign languages, Auslan's grammar and vocabulary is quite different from English. Its development cannot be attributed to any individual; rather, it is a natural language that developed organically over time.[3]

Auslan

Auslan /ˈɒz læn/ is the sign language of the Australian Deaf community. The term Auslan is an acronym of "Australian Sign Language", coined by Trevor Johnston in the early 1980s, although the language itself is much older. Auslan is related to British Sign Language (BSL) and New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL); the three have descended from the same parent language, and together comprise the BANZSL language family. Auslan has also been influenced by Irish Sign Language (ISL) and more recently has borrowed signs from American Sign Language (ASL).

The number of people for whom Auslan is their primary or preferred language is very difficult to determine. According to the 2001, 2006 and 2011 Censuses published by Australian Bureau of Statistics, the population of Auslan users in Australia have increased by 54.57%[4] thus debunking the speculation that Auslan is an endangered language. As of 2011, the Census population of Auslan users in Australia is 9723 - an increase of 4417 new users from the 2001 Census. Based on this statistical trajectory, it is expected that the number of people for whom Auslan is their primary or preferred language could exceed 12000 in the 2016 Census. Although the number is increasing, approximately 5% of all Auslan users are acquiring the language from their parents with the rest learning the language from other peers such as friends or colleagues later in life.

On 25 January 2015, the Young Australian of the Year was announced, Drisana Levitzke-Gray. She is a strong proponent of Auslan and, in her acceptance speech, called on the Government of Australia and Australians, to learn and use Auslan as a natural language, as a human right for Australians.

Auslan was recognised by the Australian government as a "community language other than English" and the preferred language of the Deaf community in policy statements in 1987[5] and 1991.[6] However, this recognition has yet to filter through to many institutions, government departments and professionals who work with Deaf people.[citation needed]

The emerging status of Auslan has gone hand-in-hand with the advancement of the Deaf community in Australia, beginning in the early 1980s. In 1982, the registration of the first sign language interpreters by NAATI,[7] a newly established regulatory body for interpreting and translating, accorded a sense of legitimacy to Auslan, furthered by the publishing of the first dictionary of Auslan in 1989. Auslan began to emerge as a language of instruction for Deaf students in secondary schools in the 1990s â€” mainly through the provision of interpreters in mainstream (hearing) schools with deaf support units. Boosted by the 1992 enactment of the federal Disability Discrimination Act, sign language interpreters are also increasingly provided in tertiary education.

Today there is a growing number of courses teaching Auslan as a second language, from an elective language subject offered by some secondary schools to a two-year full-time diploma at TAFE.

Though becoming more and more visible, Auslan is still rarely seen at public events or on television; there are, for example, no interpreted news services. There is a regular program on community television station Channel 31 in Melbourne, "Deaf TV", which is entirely in Auslan and is produced by Deaf volunteers.

The Young Australian of the Year for 2015, Drisana Levitzke-Gray, is a strong proponent of Auslan and, in her acceptance speech using Auslan, called on the Government of Australia and Australians, to learn and use Auslan as a natural language, as a human right for Australians.[8]

Auslan evolved from sign languages brought to Australia during the nineteenth century from Britain and Ireland. The earliest record of a deaf Australian was convict Elizabeth Steel, who arrived in 1790 on the Second Fleet ship "Lady Juliana".[9] There is as yet no historical evidence, however, that she used a sign language. The first known signing Deaf immigrant was the engraver John Carmichael[10] who arrived in Sydney in 1825 from Edinburgh. He had been to a Deaf school there, and was known as a good storyteller in sign language.

Thirty-five years later, in 1860, a school for the Deaf was established by another Deaf Scotsman, Thomas Pattison â€” the Royal Institute for Deaf and Blind Children in New South Wales. In Victoria just a few weeks later, the Victorian College for the Deaf was founded by a Deaf Englishman, Frederick J Rose, who had been educated at the Old Kent Road School in London. These schools and others had an enormous role in the development of Auslan, as they were the first contact with sign language for many Deaf children. Because they were residential boarding schools, they provided ample opportunity for the language to thrive, even though in many schools, signing was banned from the classroom for much of the 20th century.

Irish Sign Language (ISL) also had an influence on the development of Auslan, as it was used in Catholic schools until the 1950s. The first Catholic school for Deaf children was established in 1875 by Irish nuns. Unlike British Sign Language, ISL uses a one-handed alphabet originating in French Sign Language (LSF), and although this alphabet has now almost disappeared from Australia, some initialised signs from the Irish alphabet can still be seen.

In more recent times Auslan has seen a significant amount of lexical borrowing from American Sign Language (ASL), especially in signs for technical terms. Some of these arose from the signed English educational philosophies of the 1970s and 80s, when a committee looking for signs with direct equivalence to English words found them in ASL and/or in invented English-based signed systems used in North America and introduced them in the classroom. ASL contains many signs initialised from an alphabet which was also derived from LSF, and Auslan users, already familiar with the related ISL alphabet, accepted many of the new signs easily.

It is sometimes wrongly assumed that English-speaking countries share a sign language. Auslan is a natural language distinct from spoken or written English. Its grammar and vocabulary often do not have direct English equivalents and vice versa. However, English, as the dominant language in Australia, has had a significant influence on Auslan, especially through manual forms such as fingerspelling and (more recently) Signed English.

It is difficult to sign Auslan fluently while speaking English, as the word order is different, and there is often no direct sign-to-word equivalence. However, mouthing of an English word together with a sign may serve to clarify when one sign may have several English equivalents. In some cases the mouth gesture that accompanies a sign may not reflect the equivalent translation in English (e.g. a sign meaning 'thick' may be accompanied by a mouthed 'fahth').

A two-handed manual alphabet, identical to the one used in British Sign Language and New Zealand Sign Language, is integral to Auslan. This alphabet is used for fingerspelling proper nouns such as personal or place names, common nouns for everyday objects, and English words, especially technical terms, for which there is no widely used sign. Fingerspelling can also be used for emphasis, clarification, or, sometimes extensively, by English-speaking learners of Auslan. The amount of fingerspelling varies with the context and the age of the signer. A recent small-scale study puts fingerspelled words in Auslan conversations at about 10% of all lexical items, roughly equal to ASL and higher than many other sign languages, such as New Zealand Sign Language.[11] The proportion is higher in older signers, suggesting that the use of fingerspelling has diminished over time.

Schembri and Johnston (in press)[11] found that the most commonly fingerspelled words in Auslan include "so", "to", "if", "but" and "do".

Some signs also feature an English word's initial letter as a handshape from a one- or two-handed manual alphabet and use it within a sign. For example, part of the sign for "Canberra" incorporates the letter "C".

Australasian Signed English was created in the late 1970s to represent English words and grammar, using mostly Auslan signs together with some additional contrived signs, as well as borrowings from American Sign Language (ASL). It was, and still is, used largely in education for teaching English to Deaf children or for discussing English in academic contexts. It was thought to be much easier for hearing teachers and parents to learn another mode of English than to learn a new language with a complex spatial grammar such as Auslan.

The use of Signed English in schools is controversial with some in the Deaf community, who regard Signed English as a contrived and unnatural artificially constructed language. Signed English has now been largely rejected by Deaf communities in Australia and its use in education is dwindling; however, a number of its signs have made their way into normal use.

Unlike oral languages, only a minority of Deaf children acquire their language from their parents (about 4 or 5% have Deaf parents[12]). Most acquire Auslan from Deaf peers at school or later through Deaf community networks. Many learn Auslan as a 'delayed' first language in adolescence or adulthood, after attempting to learn English (or another spoken/written language) without the exposure necessary to properly acquire it. The Deaf community often distinguish between "oral deaf" who grew up in an oral or signed English educational environment without Auslan, and those "Deaf Deaf" who learnt Auslan at an early age from Deaf parents or at a Deaf school. Regardless of their background, many Deaf adults consider Auslan to be their first or primary language, and see themselves as users of English as a second language.

Auslan exhibits a high degree of variation, determined by the signer's age, educational background and regional origin, and the signing community is very tolerant of individual differences in signing style.

There is no standard dialect of Auslan. Standard dialects arise through the support of institutions, such as the media, education, government and the law. As this support has not existed for most sign languages, coupled with the lack of a widely used written form and communications technologies, Auslan has diverged much more rapidly than Australian English.

Auslan was introduced to Papua New Guinea, where it mixed with local or home sign and Tok Pisin to produce Papua New Guinean Sign Language.

Linguists often regard Auslan as having two major dialects - Northern (Queensland and New South Wales), and Southern (Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia, and Western Australia). The vocabulary of the two dialects differs significantly, with different signs used even for very common concepts such as colours, animals, and days of the week; differences in grammar appear to be slight.

These two dialects may have roots in older dialectal differences from the United Kingdom, brought over by Deaf immigrants who founded the first schools for the Deaf in Australia â€” English varieties (from London) in Melbourne and Scottish ones (from Edinburgh) in Sydney, although the relationship between lexical variation in the UK and Australia appears much more complicated than this (some Auslan signs appear similar to signs used in the Newcastle variety of BSL, for example). Before schools were established elsewhere, Deaf children attended one of these two initial schools, and brought signs back to their own states. As schools opened up in each state, new signs also developed in the dormitories and playgrounds of these institutions. As a result, Auslan users can identify more precise regional varieties (e.g., "Sydney sign", "Melbourne sign", "Perth sign", "Adelaide sign" and "Brisbane sign"). In a conversation between two strangers, one from Melbourne and the other from Perth, it is likely that one will use a small number of signs unfamiliar to the other, despite both belonging to the same "southern dialect". Signers can often identify which school someone went to, even within a few short utterances.

Despite these differences, communication between Auslan users from different regions poses little difficulty for most Deaf Australians, who often become aware of different regional vocabulary as they grow older, through travel and Deaf community networks, and because Deaf people are so well practised in bridging barriers to communication.

A number of Indigenous Australian sign languages exist, unrelated to Auslan, such as Warlpiri Sign Language. They occur in the southern, central, and western desert regions, coastal Arnhem Land, some islands of north coast, the western side of Cape York Peninsula, and on some Torres Strait Islands. They have also been noted as far south as the Murray River.

Deaf Indigenous people of Far North Queensland (extending from Yarrabah to Cape York) form a distinct signing community using a dialect of Auslan;[13] it has features of indigenous sign languages and gestural systems as well as signs and grammar of Auslan.

Auslan has no widely used written form; transcribing Auslan in the past was largely an academic exercise. The first Auslan dictionaries used either photographs or drawings with motion arrows to describe signs; more recently, technology has made possible the use of short video clips on CD-ROM or online dictionaries.

SignWriting, however, has its adherents in Australia.[14]