A dam is a barrier that impounds water or underground streams. Dams generally serve the primary purpose of retaining water, while other structures such as floodgates or levees (also known as dikes) are used to manage or prevent water flow into specific land regions. Hydropower and pumped-storage hydroelectricity are often used in conjunction with dams to generate electricity. A dam can also be used to collect water or for storage of water which can be evenly distributed between locations.

The word dam can be traced back to Middle English, and before that, from Middle Dutch, as seen in the names of many old cities. Early dam building took place in Mesopotamia and the Middle East. Dams were used to control the water level, for Mesopotamia's weather affected the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, and could be quite unpredictable.

The earliest known dam is the Jawa Dam in Jordan, 100 kilometres (62 mi) northeast of the capital Amman. This gravity dam featured a 4.5 m (15 ft) high and 1 m (3 ft 3 in) wide stone wall, supported by a 50 m (160 ft) wide earth rampart. The structure is dated to 3000 BC. The Ancient Egyptian Sadd-el-Kafara Dam at Wadi Al-Garawi, located about 25 km (16 mi) south of Cairo, was 102 m (335 ft) long at its base and 87 m (285 ft) wide. The structure was built around 2800 or 2600 B.C. as a diversion dam for flood control, but was destroyed by heavy rain during construction or shortly afterwards. By the mid-late third century BC, an intricate water-management system within Dholavira in modern day India, was built. The system included 16 reservoirs, dams and various channels for collecting water and storing it.

OFWGKTA, often abbreviated Odd Future, is an American alternative hip hop collective from Los Angeles, California. The group is led by rapper/producer Tyler, The Creator, and includes rappers Hodgy Beats, Earl Sweatshirt, Domo Genesis and Mike G, singer Frank Ocean, producers Left Brain, Syd tha Kyd, Matt Martians, and Hal Williams, and other non-musical members, notably Jasper Dolphin, Taco and L-Boy.

There are multiple groups inside the collective: The Jet Age of Tomorrow, EarlWolf, The Internet and MellowHype.

Odd Future formed in 2007 in Los Angeles. The original members were founder Tyler, the Creator, Left Brain, Hodgy Beats, and Tj Starr The Super 3, Jasper Dolphin and Casey Veggies, the latter of which appeared only on the group's debut mixtape before branching out to other projects. However Casey Veggies remains a close contributor. At some point before the release of Bastard, Brandun DeShay joined the group, and appeared on the track Session, but Tyler and DeShay had a falling out, and his vocals on Session were replaced by Mike G. Tyler also dissed DeShay on his track Yonkers. Much of their music is recorded in a room in Syd the Kyd's and Taco's house, known as the Trap, located in South Los Angeles. They have produced multiple releases, the first of which were available for free on their website.

A longitudinal fissure separates the human brain into two distinct cerebral hemispheres, connected by the corpus callosum. The sides resemble each other and each hemisphere's structure is generally mirrored by the other side. Yet despite the strong anatomical similarities, the functions of each cortical hemisphere are managed differently. For example, the lateral sulcus generally is longer in the left hemisphere than in the right hemisphere.

Broad generalizations are often made in popular psychology about one side or the other having characteristic labels such as "logical" for the left side or "creative" for the right. These labels need to be treated carefully; although a lateral dominance is measurable, these characteristics are in fact existent in both sides, and experimental evidence provides little support for correlating the structural differences between the sides with functional differences.

The extent of any modularity, or specialization of brain function by area, remains under investigation. If a specific region of the brain or even an entire hemisphere is either injured or destroyed, its functions can sometimes be assumed by a neighboring region, even in the opposite hemisphere, depending upon the area damaged and the patient's age. When injury interferes with pathways from one area to another, alternative (indirect) connections may come to exist to communicate information with detached areas, despite the inefficiencies.

Amal Murkus (Arabic: أمل مرقس‎) is a Palestinian Christian singer living in Israel. Her post-modern music style has a variety of Mediterranean influences. Her first album, Amal, was released in 1998, and her second, Shauq, in 2004. Her songs take inspiration by Palestinian folklore, traditional Arabic heritage, and pop music elements, and express the struggle against the marginalization and exclusion that Arab Palestinian culture feels.^{cit req}

Murkus was born and raised in the Arab town of Kafr Yasif in Galilee, and has devoted her career to promoting Palestinian music and culture in Israel and abroad. Murkus has been performing since she was five years old. In 1979, she won first prize in the Israeli Arab children's song festival, and went on to graduate from the Institute for Stage Art in Tel Aviv in 1990.^{cit req}

Murkus is a member of the counseling board of Free Muse, an organization working against the censorship of art and music. She took an active part in its congress in Denmark in 2003. Amal is currently studying art as a tool for social change at Musrara College in Jerusalem.^{ref req}

Norman Gary Finkelstein (born December 8, 1953) is an American political scientist, activist and author. His primary fields of research are the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the politics of the Holocaust, an interest motivated by the experiences of his parents who are Jewish Holocaust survivors. He is a graduate of Binghamton University and received his Ph.D in Political Science from Princeton University. He has held faculty positions at Brooklyn College, Rutgers University, Hunter College, New York University, and, most recently, DePaul University, where he was an assistant professor from 2001 to 2007.

In 2007, after a highly publicized row between Finkelstein and a notable opponent of his, Alan Dershowitz, Finkelstein's tenure bid at DePaul was denied. Finkelstein was placed on administrative leave for the 2007–2008 academic year, and on September 5, 2007, he announced his resignation after coming to a settlement with the university on generally undisclosed terms. An official statement from DePaul strongly defended the decision to deny Finkelstein tenure, stated that outside influence played no role in the decision, and praised Finkelstein "as a prolific scholar and outstanding teacher."