Life in United Kingdom

Common beans and lentils in Europe and America navy beans (Europe), used in baked bean tins   red kidney beans (common in America and Europe)   chickpeas (Middle East, Mediterranean and India)   black beans (South and Central America)   butter beans, aka Lima beans (originate from south America and USA, now common in the UK)   lentils (originate from Middle East, now common in the UK)   cannellini beans, aka white kidney beans (originate from south America)   chili beans, aka pink beans (originate from South America)   pinto beans (common in Mexican and Southwest of the USA)   Common beans in Asia soybeans (common in Asia), called edamame when they are immature   soybeans  黄豆 ...

In most places the sun is most intense between 10am and 2pm and the warmest time of a day is between 3 and 4pm. If you are in a country which is lack of sunlight, the best time for a walk in winter is 2pm when there is still intense sunlight and outdoor temperature starts to rise to the highest point in the day. In summer, the best time for a walk is probably either between 9 and 10am or after 6pm. The reasons are to avoid high UVB radiation between 10am and 2pm to avoid hot temperature between 3 and 4pm to avoid heavy road traffic between 8-9am and 5-6pm Enjoy the outdoors!

gluttonous  / ˈɡlʌt(ə)nəs /  adj.  excessively greedy glutton n . a  person  who eats and drinks excessively or voraciously. a  person  with a remarkably great desire or capacity for something: a  glutton  for work; a  glutton  for punishment In Chinese culture, glutton is usually represented by Tao tie (饕餮), an ancient Chinese mythological creature that was commonly emblazoned on bronze artifacts during the 1st millennium BC and was a greed and gluttony monster in a few video games.  In English speaking culture, glutton is sometimes represented by the Cheshire cat or Lucifer. Both of them are fat, have a rather large grin and sharp claws. Lucifer is a spoiled, sour and gluttonous cat in Disney's animation. The Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland is more neutral. Their images have been commonly used in many games to represent gluttons. For example, in Animal Restaurant , the Cheshire cat is used as a mail box and a tra...

Constituencies (a.k.a. parliamentary constituencies): each electing one Member of Parliament (MP) every 5 years to the House of Commons (Parliament). There are 650 constituencies in the UK. Wards (a.k.a. electoral divisions or electoral wards) is the primary unit of English electoral geography for borough and district councils, county councils or city councils. Each ward elects either one or two councillors to be members of the local council. There were 9,456 electoral wards/divisions in the UK and each ward has an average electorate of about 5,500 people, but ward population can vary substantially. Local council is made up of a number of Councillors (Cllr) who meet regularly to make decisions about the direction of the council and the work it does for the community. As elected bodies local councils are responsible to their local community. Attending a council meeting is the best way to find out what they do and how they make decisions. Members of publi...

UK University league tables are unreliable as they are often closely bunched together at the top, middle and bottom. Don't read too much into universities placed 10 to 20 places apart – a university in 50th place is usually separated by the one in 60th by only a few percentage points. This is also why some universities ranking fluctuate from year to year – small differences in score can mean big differences in placing. For example, a small drop in the National Student Survey (NSS) may cost a university 20 places in league tables. It makes more sense to cluster universities based on similar criteria. According to DOI: 10.1080/03054985.2015.1082905 , there are 4 distinctive clusters of universities in the UK. A stark division is evident between the old pre-1992 universities and the post-1992 universities, with large differences evident in terms of research activity, economic resources, academic selectivity, and social mix. The difference between old and new universities with respect ...

Working from home is becoming the new norm during Covid-19 lockdown. Companies and education providers are using various platforms for video conferencing and teaching online. Microsoft Teams and Zoom are the most popular platforms in companies, Higher Education (HE) and Further Education (FE) sectors. I compared features of the best video conferencing and online class platforms and rank them below. - Zoom is more stable than Teams. Zoom allows the host to control many aspects from password protecting the room to admitting people in individually. Zoom is normally paid but has a limited free version. The limitation of the free version is that max meeting length is 40 minutes, though after that you can immediately restart the meeting. With careful setup Zoom could be used for remote music instruction. The video https://youtu.be/bFRHMy2GLMs shows how to set up Zoom to get the best out of online music lessons. Zoom has a few things that Teams doesn't support, e.g. annotation...

Finnish universities are the most effective in the world when taking into account national income levels, according to a ranking of higher education systems. Top 10 countries, adjusted for economic development, are Finland South Africa United Kingdom Denmark Canada Sweden Australia New Zealand Switzerland Netherlands The rankings are judged against metrics related to resources , environment , connectivity and output , based on 24 separate variables, including the number and impact of research articles produced, university enrolment and graduate unemployment, a qualitative assessment of a country’s policy environment, and spending on tertiary education as a proportion of gross domestic product. The development-adjusted ranking is measured by adjusting GDP in purchasing-power parity terms to compensate for different prices across countries. It shows that there is a strong relationship between levels of research funding and performance but the mix between public and...