Skerry

A skerry is a small rocky island, usually defined to be too small for habitation; it may simply be a rocky reef. A skerry can also be called a low sea stack.

The term skerry is derived from the Old Norse sker, which means a rock in the sea. The Old Norse term sker was brought into the English language via the Scots language word spelled skerrie or skerry. It is a cognate of the Scandinavian languages' words for skerry – Icelandic, Faroese: sker, Danish: skær, Swedish: skär, Norwegian: skjær / skjer, found also in German: Schäre, Finnish: kari, Estonian: skäär, Latvian: šēra, Lithuanian: Šcheras and Russian: шхеры (shkhery). In Scottish Gaelic, it appears as sgeir, e.g. Sula Sgeir, in Irish as sceir, in Welsh as sgeri, and in Manx as skeyr. The word is also probably related to the Italian word scoglio, sharing the same meaning, and the Spanish word escollo, meaning 'obstacle (on one's way)'.

Formation

Skerries are most commonly formed at the outlet of fjords where submerged glacially formed valleys at right angles to the coast join with other cross valleys in a complex array. In some places near the seaward margins of fjorded areas, the ice-scoured channels are so numerous and varied in direction that the rocky coast is divided into thousands of island blocks, some large and mountainous while others are merely rocky points or rock reefs that menace navigation.

Mission critical

Mission critical refers to any factor of a system (equipment, process, procedure, software, etc.) that is essential to the business operation or the organization. Failure or disruption of mission critical will result in the serious impact on business operations or organization, and even can cause social turmoil and catastrophes. Therefore, it is extremely critical to the organization's "mission."

Mission critical systems

Mission critical system — a system whose failure may result in the failure of some goal-directed activity. Mission critical system is just a longer term of a mission critical. Mission essential equipment and mission critical application are also known as mission critical system. Mission critical system is usually the online banking system, railway and aircraft operating and control system, electric power systems, and many other computer systems that will affect the business and society seriously if downed.

A good example of a mission critical system is a navigational system for a spacecraft. The difference between mission critical and business critical is in the global activity and possibility of whole personal life black out. A business-critical system fault can influence only to a single company or bunch of them and can partly stop lifetime activity (hours or days).

Brian Skerry

Brian Skerry is an underwater photojournalist who works primarily for National Geographic magazine.

Skerry was born in Milford, Massachusetts in 1962, and grew up in Uxbridge. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in media and communications from Worcester State College in 1984. Before becoming a professional photographer, he worked selling corrugated materials and pursued photography on the side.

Skerry has worked for National Geographic' since 1998 and has photographed a number of feature stories. Before 1998 he primarily worked doing shipwreck photography in the waters off of New England, but through his relationship with National Geographic he has now shifted to wildlife photography throughout the world. In so doing he has become passionate about sounding the alarm of the decline of the world's fishing stocks; several of his recent stories focus on conservation photography. Over his three-decade career, he has spent over 10,000 hours underwater.

Skerry has written five books, including "Successful Underwater Photography" (coauthored with Howard Hall) and "Ocean Soul." Besides his 19 published National Geographic stories, his work has also been featured in a number of magazines and he has appeared on several television programs.

Nat Geo Wild

Nat Geo Wild (stylized as Nat Geo WILD or abbreviated as NGW) is a cable/satellite TV channel focused primarily on wildlife and natural history programming. It is a sister network to National Geographic Channel and it is the latest channel to be jointly launched by the National Geographic Society and Fox Cable Networks.

It first launched in Hong Kong on January 1, 2006. The channel later launched in the United Kingdom, Turkey, Ireland, Romania, India, Vietnam, and Poland replacing the now defunct Adventure One. The channel remains the world's first bilingual wildlife service, available in English and Cantonese in the Hong Kong market as well as Tagalog in The Philippines. The channel launched in Latin America on November 1, 2009 as a high definition channel. In 2010, it launched in the United States.

As of February 2015, approximately 57,891,000 American households (49.7% of households with television) receive Nat Geo Wild.

Programming

Availability

Africa

The channel launched in South Africa in mid-2009, and is available on the South African Satellite Network DSTV.

National Geographic

National Geographic or NatGeo may refer to:

See also