A civil union is a legally recognized arrangement similar to marriage, created primarily as a means to provide recognition in law for same-sex couples. Civil unions grant most or all of the rights of marriage except the title itself. Around the world, developed democracies began establishing civil unions in the late 1990s, often developing them from less formal domestic partnerships, which grant only some of the rights of marriage. In the majority of countries that established these unions in laws, they have since been either supplemented or replaced by same-sex marriage. Civil unions are viewed by LGBT rights campaigners as a "first step" towards establishing same-sex marriage, as civil unions are viewed by supporters of LGBT rights as a "separate but equal" or "second class" status. While civil unions are often established for both opposite-sex couples and same-sex couples, in a number of countries they are available to same-sex couples only.
A bar association is a professional association of lawyers as generally organized in countries following the Anglo-American types of jurisprudence. The word bar is derived from the old English/European custom of using a physical railing to separate the area in which court business is done from the viewing area for the general public.
Gender neutrality, also known as gender-neutralism or the gender neutrality movement, is the idea that policies, language, and other social institutions should avoid distinguishing roles according to people's sex or gender, in order to avoid discrimination arising from the impression that there are social roles for which one gender is more suited than another.
Ellen Ochoa is an American engineer, former astronaut and former director of the Johnson Space Center. In 1993 Ochoa became the first Hispanic woman to go to space when she served on a nine-day mission aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery. Ochoa became director of the center upon the retirement of the previous director, Michael Coats, on December 31, 2012. She was the first Hispanic director and the second female director of Johnson Space Center.
Norman (Norm) Ralph Augustine is a U.S. aerospace businessman who served as United States Under Secretary of the Army from 1975 to 1977. Augustine served as chairman and CEO of the Lockheed Martin Corporation. He was chairman of the Review of United States Human Space Flight Plans Committee.
David Andrew Patterson is an American computer pioneer and academic who has held the position of professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley since 1976. He announced retirement in 2016 after serving nearly forty years, becoming a distinguished engineer at Google. He currently is Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of the RISC-V Foundation, and the Pardee Professor of Computer Science, Emeritus at UC Berkeley.
Same-sex marriage is legal in the U.S. state of California. The state first issued marriage licenses to same-sex couples June 16, 2008 as a result of the Supreme Court of California finding in In re Marriage Cases that barring same-sex couples from marriage violated the state's Constitution. The issuance of such licenses was halted from November 5, 2008 through June 27, 2013 due to the passage of Proposition 8—a state constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriages. The granting of same-sex marriages recommenced following the United States Supreme Court decision in Hollingsworth v. Perry, which restored the effect of a federal district court ruling that overturned Proposition 8 as unconstitutional.
France Anne-Dominic Córdova is an American astrophysicist and administrator, who was the fourteenth director of the National Science Foundation. Previously, she was the eleventh President of Purdue University from 2007 to 2012.
Paul Alivisatos is an American scientist of Greek descent who has been hailed as a pioneer in nanomaterials development, and is an internationally recognized authority on the fabrication of nanocrystals and their use in biomedical and renewable energy applications. He is ranked fifth among the world's 100 top chemists in the list released by Thomson Reuters. In 2009, he was named the Director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and in 2014 he was named a laureate for the National Medal of Science. In 2016 he was named U.C. Berkeley's Vice Chancellor for Research. As of July 1, 2017, he is University of California, Berkeley's Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost, and will continue on as Vice Chancellor for Research on an interim basis.
Gretchen A. Whitney High School, called Whitney High School or WHS, is a public school in Cerritos, California serving grades 7–12. It is in the ABC Unified School District. According to US News Report 2018, Whitney High School is ranked 1st in the state of California, and ranked 14th nationally.
Kamala Devi Harris is an American lawyer and politician serving as the junior United States Senator from California since 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Harris is the first Asian American woman and the first African American of either sex to represent California in the United States Senate.
The Association of Christian Schools International (ACSI), founded in 1978, is an association of evangelical Protestant Christian schools.
Stephen P. Hubbell is an American ecologist on the faculty of the University of California, Los Angeles. He is author of the unified neutral theory of biodiversity and biogeography (UNTB), which seeks to explain the diversity and relative abundance of species in ecological communities. Hubbell is also a senior staff scientist at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Balboa, Panama. He is also well known for tropical forest studies. In 1980 he and Robin Foster of the Field Museum in Chicago, launched the first of the 50 hectare forest dynamics studies on Barro Colorado Island in Panama, and this plot became the flagship of a global network of large permanent forest dynamics plots, all following identical measurement protocols. This global network now has more than 40 plots in 22 tropical countries, and these plots contain more than 8000 tree species and 6 million individual trees that are tagged, mapped, and monitored long-term for growth, survival and recruitment. The Center for Tropical Forest Science coordinates research across global network of plots through the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute. Since 2008 the program has expanded into the temperate zone, and is now known as the Smithsonian Institution Global Earth Observatory or SIGEO.
The rank and title of Order of National Scientist of the Philippines, abbreviated as ONS or the Order of National Scientists is the highest award accorded to Filipino scientists by the Philippine government.
The California Culinary Academy (CCA) was a for-profit school, and an affiliate of Le Cordon Bleu located in San Francisco, California. Danielle Carlisle established the school in 1977 to train chefs using the European education model. The original location on the corner of Turk and Polk Street, in the Tenderloin area of San Francisco, was located in the remodeled, top-floor, cafeteria in the Del Monte headquarters. The academy trained more than 15,000 people for restaurant careers through its 30-week baking and pastry chef program and 16-month culinary arts degree program. It was purchased by Career Education Corporation in 1999.
The Suncoast Chapter is the regional chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) that represents Florida; Alexandria, Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Lake Charles, & New Orleans, Louisiana; Mobile, Alabama; Thomasville, Georgia; and Puerto Rico. NATAS presents the coveted Emmy among sectors of the television industry in several award ceremonies.
Bruce E. Cain is a Professor of Political Science at Stanford University and Director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West. Professor Cain's fields of interest include American politics, political regulation, democratic theory, and state and local government. He has written extensively on elections, legislative representation, California politics, redistricting, and political regulation. In addition to his academic work, Cain frequently is quoted in national and international media, and regularly appears as a political expert for KGO-TV in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is a member of the American Political Science Association, and serves on the editorial boards of Election Law Journal and American Politics Research. Professor Cain has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2000. During AY 2012-13, Cain will serve as a Straus Fellow at New York University's Straus Institute for the Advanced Study of Law and Justice.
California is seen as one of the most liberal states in the U.S. in regard to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) rights, which have received nationwide recognition since the 1970s. Same-sex sexual activity has been legal in the state since 1976. Discrimination protections regarding sexual orientation and gender identity or expression were adopted statewide in 2003. Transgender people are also permitted to change their legal gender on official documents without any medical interventions, and mental health providers are prohibited from engaging in conversion therapy on minors.
Kerry-Lynne D. Findlay is a Canadian politician, who was elected as the MP for South Surrey—White Rock in the 2019 federal election. She previously sat in the House of Commons of Canada from the 2011 election until 2015. She represented the electoral district of Delta—Richmond East as a member of the Conservative Party. She was appointed and sworn in as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Justice on June 1, 2011, and as Associate Minister of National Defence on February 22, 2013. She served as the Minister of National Revenue from July 15, 2013 until November 4, 2015.
The NOGI Awards is an award presented annually by the Academy of Underwater Arts and Sciences (AUAS) to diving luminaries and is "considered the Oscar of the ocean world." Selection of recipients is based on their record of accomplishments and excellence in the diving world. NOGI awards are given out to world-class standouts of the diving community who have distinguished themselves and made a global impact on diving in one or more of four general categories: Science, Arts, Sports/Education, and Environment. A fifth NOGI is given for Distinguished Service.
