Due to the First Amendment, which grants freedom of religion , there is a diversity of religious beliefs and practices in the U.S.
Religion in the United States is characterized by both a wide diversity in religious beliefs and practices and by a high adherence level.
Christianity is the largest religion in the United States, with around 77% of the population identifying itself as Christian.
Ecumenism mainly refers to initiatives aimed at creating greater Christian unity or cooperation.
Religion plays a “very important” role in the lives of most Americans; a proportion unique among developed nations
Most modern Western societies are recognized as secular because they enjoy near-complete freedom of religion.
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Protestantism is one of the major umbrella religions in the U.S., and is constantly evolving in response to political and social changes.
Catholicism has a long history in the U.S., with the Catholic Church the single largest religious denomination
in the United States.
American Jews, also known as Jewish Americans, are American citizens of the Jewish faith or Jewish ethnicity. The Jewish community in the United States is composed predominantly of Ashkenazi Jews who emigrated from Central and Eastern Europe, and their U.S.-born descendants. Minorities from all Jewish ethnic divisions are also represented, including Sephardi Jews, Mizrahi Jews, and a number of converts. The American Jewish community manifests a wide range of Jewish cultural traditions, as well as encompassing the full spectrum of Jewish religious observance.
The American Muslim population is a racially diverse group that has been present in the U.S. since before the Civil War
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There are correlations between the degree of religious belief in society and social factors like mortality rates, wealth and happiness.
The main religious preferences in the Unites States include (in order): Christianity, unaffiliate, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism.
Analytical chemistry spans nearly all areas of chemistry but involves the development of tools and methods to measure physical properties of substances and apply those techniques to the identification of their presence (qualitative analysis) and quantify the amount present (quantitative analysis) of species in a wide variety of settings.
This course is an introduction to the basic principles of biology focusing on humans as biological organisms. Topics include chemistry; cell and tissue structure; human body structure and function; human reproduction and development; human genetics, heredity and evolution; and human ecology. An emphasis is placed on the application of principles to current issues, including common human diseases, genetic engineering, and the impact of humans on the world's ecosystems.
If all cultures developed the ability to communicate, why do we see things so very differently? What purpose did communication serve in a culture? How did some cultures develop ways in which to share and negotiate meaning that my culture did not? Can I truly communicate with someone that doesn’t share my dominant culture? What does competent intercultural communication “look” like? In the quest to explore the multiple facets of intercultural communication, this book is divided into three general areas: foundations, elements, and contexts. The foundations cover the basic principles associated with communication studies and culture. The elements move beyond the basics into self, identities, verbal, and nonverbal process associated with communication and culture. Contexts explore all the different environments such as media, business, and education, in which intercultural communication occurs.
Taken from the publisher: "According to the author, the world did not need another introductory text in mass communication. But the world did need another kind of introductory text in mass communication, and that is how Understanding Media and Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication was birthed."
From LibreTexts
This textbook was written and designed especially for College of the Canyons Communications students. The following chapters will cover topics such as: understanding cultural identity, social construction, cultural biases, and culture shock. There are two types of interactive features in this book to help you, the student, engage with the various concepts and procedures behind intercultural communication.
Composition 2 is an expository writing course requiring more advanced writing skills than Composition 1, yet reviewing and incorporating some of the same skills. This course teaches research skills by emphasizing the development of advanced analytical/critical reading skills, proficiency in investigative research, and the writing of persuasive prose including documented and researched argumentative essays. A major component of this course will be an emphasis on the research process and information literacy.
This book was written for an experimental freshman course at the University of Colorado. The course is now an elective that the majority of our electrical and computer engineering students take in the second semester of their freshman year, just before their first circuits course. Our department decided to offer this course for several reasons:
we wanted to pique student' interest in engineering by acquainting them with engineering teachers early in their university careers and by providing with exposure to the types of problems that electrical and computer engineers are asked to solve;
we wanted students entering the electrical and computer engineering programs to be prepared in complex analysis, phasors, and linear algebra, topics that are of fundamental importance in our discipline;
we wanted students to have an introduction to a software application tool, such as MATLAB, to complete their preparation for practical and efficient computing in their subsequent courses and in their professional careers;
we wanted students to make early contact with advanced topics like vector graphics, filtering, and binary coding so that they would gain a more rounded picture of modern electrical and computer engineering.
In order to introduce this course, we had to sacrifice a second semester of Pascal programming. We concluded that the sacrifice was worth making because we found that most of our students were prepared for high-level language computing after just one semester of programming.
We believe engineering educators elsewhere are reaching similar conclusions about their own students and curriculums. We hope this book helps create a much needed dialogue about curriculum revision and that it leads to the development of similar introductory courses that encourage students to enter and practice our craft.Students electing to take this course have completed one semester of calculus, computer programming, chemistry, and humanities.
Concurrently with this course, students take physics and a second semester of calculus, as well as a second semester in the humanities. By omitting the advanced topics marked by asterisks, we are able to cover Complex Numbers through Linear Algebra, plus two of the three remaining chapters. The book is organized so that the instructor can select any two of the three. If every chapter of this book is covered, including the advanced topics, then enough material exists for a two-semester course.
The first three chapters of this book provide a fairly complete coverage of complex numbers, the functions e^x and e^jand phasors. Our department philosophy is that these topics must be understood if a student is to succeed in electrical and computer engineering. These three chapters may also be used as a supplement to a circuits course. A measured pace of presentation, taking between sixteen and eighteen lectures, is sufficient to cover all but the advanced sections in Complex Numbers through Phasors.
The chapter on "linear algebra" is prerequisite for all subsequent chapters. We use eight to ten lectures to cover it. We devote twelve to sixteen lectures to cover topics from Vector Graphics through Binary Codes. (We assume a semester consisting of 42 lectures and three exams.) The chapter on vector graphics applies the linear algebra learned in the previous chapter to the problem of translating, scaling, and rotating images. "Filtering" introduces the student to basic ideas in averaging and filtering. The chapter on "Binary Codes" covers the rudiments of binary coding, including Huffman codes and Hamming codes.
If the users of this book find "Vector Graphics" through "Binary Codes" too confining, we encourage them to supplement the essential material in "Complex Numbers" through "Linear Algebra" with their own course notes on additional topics. Within electrical and computer engineering there are endless possibilities. Practically any set of topics that can be taught with conviction and enthusiasm will whet the student's appetite. We encourage you to write to us or to our editor, Tom Robbins, about your ideas for additional topics. We would like to think that our book and its subsequent editions will have an open architecture that enables us to accommodate a wide range of student and faculty interests.
Throughout this book we have used MATLAB programs to illustrate key ideas. MATLAB is an interactive, matrix-oriented language that is ideally suited to circuit analysis, linear systems, control theory, communications, linear algebra, and numerical analysis. MATLAB is rapidly becoming a standard software tool in universities and engineering companies. (For more information about MATLAB, return the attached card in the back of this book to The MathWorks, Inc.) MATLAB programs are designed to develop the student's ability to solve meaningful problems, compute, and plot in a high-level applications language. Our students get started in MATLAB by working through “An Introduction to MATLAB,” while seated at an IBM PC (or look-alike) or an Apple Macintosh. We also have them run through the demonstration programs in "Complex Numbers". Each week we give three classroom lectures and conduct a one-hour computer lab session. Students use this lab session to hone MATLAB skills, to write programs, or to conduct the numerical experiments that are given at the end of each chapter. We require that these experiments be carried out and then reported in a short lab report that contains (i) introduction, (ii) analytical computations, (iii) computer code, (iv) experimental results, and (v) conclusions. The quality of the numerical results and the computer graphics astonishes students. Solutions to the chapter problems are available from the publisher for instructors who adopt this text for classroom use.
We wish to acknowledge our late colleague Richard Roberts, who encouraged us to publish this book, and Michael Lightner and Ruth Ravenel, who taught "Linear Algebra" and "Vector Graphics" and offered helpful suggestions on the manuscript. We thank C. T. Mullis for allowing us to use his notes on binary codes to guide our writing of "Binary Codes". We thank Cédric Demeure and Peter Massey for their contributions to the writing of "An Introduction to MATLAB" and "The Edix Editor". We thank Tom Robbins, our editor at Addison-Wesley, for his encouragement, patience, and many suggestions. We are especially grateful to Julie Fredlund, who composed this text through many drafts and improved it in many ways. We thank her for preparing an excellent manuscript for production.
The text introduces some of the key concepts in intercultural communication as traditionally presented in (North American) courses and textbooks, namely the study of differences between cultures, as represented in the works and theories of Edward Hall (1959) and Geert Hofstede (1980). Common to these approaches is the prominence of context, leading to a view of human interactions as dynamic and changeable, given the complexity of language and culture, as human agents interact with their environments. This aligns with the principal approach used in this textbook, which is broadly ecological, looking at the multiple factors of individuality and context (including but not limited to national origin) that influence intercultural communication. There is an attempt throughout the text to incorporate views on intercultural communication from a geographically diverse array of scholars, supplementing the author's North American perspective. How intercultural communication is envisioned as a discipline varies considerably from country to country. In many cases, intercultural communication is associated with professional areas such as business, education, healthcare, or hospitality services. These are all areas in which communication with those who represent different cultures and languages is crucially important, and where encounters between those representing different cultures is increasingly the norm.