Piedmont

Piedmont (/ˈpiːdmɒnt/ PEED-mont; Italian: Piemonte, pronounced [pjeˈmonte]; Piedmontese and Occitan: Piemont; French: Piémont) is one of the 20 regions of Italy. It has an area of 25,402 square kilometres (9,808 sq mi) and a population of about 4.6 million. The capital of Piedmont is Turin.

Toponymy

The name Piedmont comes from medieval Latin Pedemontium or Pedemontis, i.e., ad pedem montium, meaning “at the foot of the mountains” (attested in documents of the end of the 12th century).

Geography

Piedmont is surrounded on three sides by the Alps, including Monviso, where the Po rises, and Monte Rosa. It borders with France, Switzerland and the Italian regions of Lombardy, Liguria, Aosta Valley and for a very small fragment with Emilia Romagna. The geography of Piedmont is 43.3% mountainous, along with extensive areas of hills (30.3%) and plains (26.4%).

Piedmont is the second largest of Italy's 20 regions, after Sicily. It is broadly coincident with the upper part of the drainage basin of the river Po, which rises from the slopes of Monviso in the west of the region and is Italy’s largest river. The Po collects all the waters provided within the semicircle of mountains (Alps and Apennines) which surround the region on three sides.

Piedmont (train)

The Piedmont or Piedmont Service is a twice-daily passenger train operated by Amtrak and the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) between Raleigh and Charlotte, North Carolina. Operation began in May 1995. North Carolina owns the rolling stock used on the Piedmont, unlike the Carolinian which uses Amtrak rolling stock.

History

North Carolina developed the Piedmont as a follow-on to the successful Carolinian, which had entered service in early 1990. Officials sought to add a second daily round-trip between Charlotte and Raleigh. In the fall of 1990, the board of transportation approved the acquisition of five used passenger cars and the leasing of two diesel locomotives. The board planned to have the second train enter service by early 1992.

The Piedmont (as the train came to be called) faced numerous delays. Norfolk Southern, which leased the track, insisted that the state construct a wye in Charlotte for turning the two trains around. At the time, the Carolinian had continued 10 miles (16 km) south to Pineville and turned around there. In 1993, the cost of the wye plus land purchase was estimated at $200,000; by late 1994, this grew to $695,000, plus $1.5 million for a maintenance facility in Raleigh. The Piedmont finally began operating on May 26, 1995.

Piedmont (United States)

The Piedmont is a plateau region located in the eastern United States between the Atlantic Coastal Plain and the main Appalachian Mountains, stretching from New Jersey in the north to central Alabama in the south. The Piedmont province is a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian division. The province consists of the Piedmont Upland and Piedmont Lowlands sections.

The Atlantic Seaboard fall line marks its eastern boundary with the Coastal Plain. To the west, the Piedmont is mostly bounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains, the easternmost range of the main Appalachians. Physiographically, the Piedmont is considered a province of the larger Appalachian Highlands physiographic division. The width of the Piedmont varies, being quite narrow above the Delaware River but nearly 300 miles (475 km) wide in North Carolina. The Piedmont's area is approximately 80,000 square miles (210,000 km²).

The name "Piedmont" comes from the French term for the same physical region, literally meaning "foothill", ultimately from Latin "pedemontium", meaning "the foot of the mountains". The region is named after the Italian region of Piedmont, the lowlands which abut the Alps.

Network

Networking and networking may refer to:

Biological, biosocial, electric, and electronic

Art, entertainment, and media

In organizations

Network (film)

Network is a 1976 American satirical film written by Paddy Chayefsky and directed by Sidney Lumet, about a fictional television network, UBS, and its struggle with poor ratings. The film stars Faye Dunaway, William Holden, Peter Finch, and Robert Duvall and features Wesley Addy, Ned Beatty, and Beatrice Straight.

The film won four Academy Awards, in the categories of Best Actor (Finch), Best Actress (Dunaway), Best Supporting Actress (Straight), and Best Original Screenplay (Chayefsky).

In 2000, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". In 2002, it was inducted into the Producers Guild of America Hall of Fame as a film that has "set an enduring standard for U.S. American entertainment". In 2006, the two Writers Guilds of America voted Chayefsky's script one of the 10 greatest screenplays in the history of cinema. In 2007, the film was 64th among the 100 greatest American films as chosen by the American Film Institute, a ranking slightly higher than the one AFI had given it ten years earlier.

Network (lobby group)

Network (stylized NETWORK), A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby, is headquartered in Washington, D.C. The organization focuses its lobbying efforts in the areas of economic justice, immigration reform, healthcare, peace making and ecology. Sister Simone Campbell is the executive director of NETWORK.

History

Network was founded in December 1971 when 47 Catholic Sisters involved in education, healthcare, and other direct service activities gathered from across the U.S. at Trinity College in Washington, D.C. , with the intent to form a new type of justice ministry. This was a time when the Catholic Church was undergoing dramatic changes in response to Vatican II reforms and calls from the Vatican and U.S. Bishops to seek "Justice in the World". Individual women religious had already become involved in the civil rights movement, and anti-war activism.

The 47 Sisters voted to form a national "network" of Sisters to lobby for federal policies and legislation that promote economic and social justice. This was the founding of Network, A National Catholic Social Justice Lobby. In April 1972 they opened a two-person office in Washington, D.C.