Category: Interview Questions

1. Explain Legal Framework For Employment Legal Relationships?

Employment legal relationships are regulated by the Constitution of the Republic of Latvia, the norms of international law which are binding on the Republic of Latvia, this Law and other regulatory enactments, as well as by collective agreements and working procedure regulations. 

2. Employees Provident Fund And Miscellaneous Provisions Act, 1952 Is Applied To Establishments Employing Not Less Than _______

20 employees.

3. Explain Effect Of Laws Regulating Employment Legal Relationships With Respect To Persons ?

This Law and other regulatory enactments that regulate employment legal relationships shall be binding on all employers irrespective of their legal status and on employees if the mutual legal relationships between employers and employees are based on an employment contract. 

4. Explain About Employees?

An employee is a natural person who, on the basis of an employment contract for an agreed work remuneration, performs specific work under the guidance of an employer. 

5. Explain Invalidity Of Regulations That Erode The Legal Status Of Employees?

1. Provisions of a collective agreement, working procedure regulations, as well as the provisions of an employment contract and orders of an employer which, contrary to regulatory enactments, erode the legal status of an employee, shall not be valid.
2. Provisions of an employment contract which contrary to a collective agreement erodes the legal status of an employee shall not be valid. 

6. Explain The Principle Of Equal Rights?

1. Everyone has an equal right to work, to fair, safe and healthy working conditions, as well as to fair work remuneration.
2. The rights provided for in Paragraph one of this Section shall be ensured without any direct or indirect discrimination – irrespective of a person’s race, skin colour, gender, age, disability, religious, political or other conviction, ethnic or social origin, property or marital status, sexual orientation or other circumstances. 
3. In order to promote the adoption of the principle of equal rights in relation to disabled persons, an employer has a duty to take measures that are necessary in conformity with the circumstances in order to adapt the work environment to facilitate the possibility of disabled persons to establish employment legal relations, fulfil work duties, be promoted to higher positions or be sent for occupational training or the raising of qualifications, insofar as such measures do not place an unreasonable burden on the employer. 

7. Explain The Right To Unite In Organisations?

Right to Unite in Organisations :
 Employees, as well as employers have the right to freely, without any direct or indirect discrimination in relation to any of the circumstances referred to in Section 7, Paragraph two of this Law, unite in organisations and to join them in order to defend their social, economic and occupational rights and interests.

 Affiliation of an employee with the organisations referred to in Paragraph one of this Section or the desire of an employee to join such organisations may not serve as a basis for refusal to enter into an employment contract, for termination of an employment contract or for otherwise restricting the rights of an employee. 

8. Explain The Prohibition To Cause Adverse Consequences?

Prohibition to Cause Adverse Consequences :
 

It is prohibited to apply sanctions to an employee or to otherwise directly or indirectly cause adverse consequences for him or her because the employee, within the scope of employment legal relationships, exercises his or her rights in a permissible manner, as well as when if he or she informs competent institutions or officials regarding suspicions with respect to the committing of criminal offences or administrative violations in the workplace.

 If in the case of a dispute, an employee indicates conditions, which could be a basis for the adverse consequences caused by the employer, the employer has a duty to prove that the employee has not been punished or adverse consequences have been directly or indirectly caused for him or her because the employee, within the scope of employment legal relationships, exercises his or her rights in a permissible manner. 

9. What Is The Representation Of Employees?

Representation of Employees : 

• Employees shall exercise the defence of their social, economic and occupational rights and interests directly, or indirectly through the mediation of employee representatives. Within the meaning of this Law, employee representatives shall mean: 
•  an employee trade union on behalf of which a trade union institution or an official authorised by the articles of association of the trade union acts; or
•  authorised employee representatives who have been elected in accordance with Paragraph two of this Section.
• Authorised employee representatives may be elected if an undertaking employs five or more employees. Authorised employee representatives shall be elected for a specified term of office by a simple majority vote at a meeting in which at least half the employees employed by an undertaking of the relevant employer participate. The course of the meeting shall be recorded in minutes and decisions taken shall be entered in the minutes. Authorised employee representatives shall express a united view with respect to the employer.
• If there are several employee trade unions, they shall authorise their representatives for joint negotiations with an employer in proportion to the number of members of each trade union but not less than one representative each. If representatives of several trade unions have been appointed for negotiations with an employer, they shall express a united view.
• If there is one employee trade union or several such trade unions and authorised employee representatives, they shall authorise their representatives for joint negotiations with the employer in proportion to the number of employees represented but not less than one representative each. If representatives of one employee trade union or representatives of several such trade unions and authorised employee representatives have been appointed for negotiations with an employer, they shall express a united view.  
• In calculating the number of employees upon the reaching of which authorised employee representatives may be elected in an undertaking, or institutions of representation may be established, as well as in calculating the number of employees represented, the employees with whom an employment contract has been entered into for a specified term shall also be taken into account.

10. What Are The Rights And Duties Of Employee Representatives?

Rights and Duties of Employee Representatives : 
Employee representatives, when performing their duties, have the following rights:

• To request and receive from the employer information regarding the current economic and social situation of the undertaking, as well as regarding possible changes;
• To receive information in good time and consult with the employer before the employer takes such decisions as may affect the interests of employees, in particular decisions which may substantially affect work remuneration, working conditions and employment in the undertaking;
• To take part in the determination and improvement of work remuneration provisions, working environment, working conditions and organisation of working time, as well as in protecting the safety and health of employees;
• To enter the territory of the undertaking, as well as to have access to workplaces;
• To hold meetings of employees in the territory and premises of the undertaking;and
• To monitor how regulatory enactments, the collective agreement and working procedure regulations are being observed in employment legal relationships. 

11. Explain The Law Applicable To Contracts Of Employment And Employment Legal Relationships?

Law Applicable to Contracts of Employment and Employment Legal Relationships
:

• An employee and an employer may agree on the law applicable to an employment contract and employment legal relationships. Such choice may not abrogate or restrict the protection of an employee that is determined by prescriptive or prohibitive norms of a law of the State which law would be applicable in conformity with Paragraphs two, three, four or five of this Section.
• If an employee and employer have not chosen the applicable law, the laws of Latvia shall apply to the employment contract and employment legal relationships in so far as Paragraphs three and four of this Section does not provide otherwise.
• If an employee and employer have not chosen the applicable law and the employee in conformity with an employment contract normally performs his or her work in another state, the law of that other state shall apply to the employment contract and employment legal relationships.
• If an employee and employer have not chosen the applicable law and the employee in conformity with an employment contract does not perform his or her work in one and the same state, the law of the state in which is located the undertaking which hired the employee shall be applicable to the employment contract and employment legal relationships.
• The provisions of Paragraphs three and four of this Section shall not apply if it appears from the circumstances that the employment contract or employment legal relationships is  more closely linked with another state. In such case, the law of the other state shall apply.
• Within the meaning of this Section, a law shall mean any legal norm. 

12. Explain The Posting Of An Employee?

Posting of an Employee :

• Within the meaning of this Law, posting of an employee shall mean those cases where, in connection with the provision of international services:
• the employer, on the basis of a contract which he or she has entered into with a person for whose benefit the work will be performed, sends an employee to another state;
• the employer sends an employee to another state to a branch or to an undertaking that is part of the group of companies; or 
• a placement agency as employer sends an employee to a person for whose benefit the work will be performed if the undertaking of such person is located in another state or it performs its operations in another state.
• Within the meaning of this Section, an employee sent shall mean an employee who for a specified period of time performs work in a state other than the state in which he or she customarily performs work.
• If an employee has been sent to perform work in Latvia, then, irrespective of the law applicable to the employment contract and employment legal relationships, such employee who has been sent shall be ensured the working conditions and employment provisions provided for by Latvian regulatory enactments, as well as by collective agreements which have been recognised as generally binding and which regulate:
• maximum working time and minimum rest period;
• minimum annual paid leave;
• minimum wage rates, as well as supplementary payment for overtime work;
• provisions regarding securing a workforce, especially through a work placement agency;
• safety, health protection and hygiene at work;
• protection measures for persons under 18 years of age, for pregnant women and women during the period following childbirth, as well as the provisions of work and employment of such persons; and
• equal treatment of men and women, as well as prohibition of discrimination in any other form.
• An employer who sends an employee to perform work in Latvia has a duty, prior to posting the employee, to inform in writing the State Border Guard and State Labour Inspection regarding such a sent employee, indicating:
• given name and surname of the employee;
• date of commencing work;
• intended length of employment;
• location of performing the work; and representative of the employer in Latvia.
• The provisions of this Section shall not apply to the ship’s crews of merchant fleet undertakings. 

13. Specify The Time Periods?

Time periods provided for by this Law shall be specified as calendar dates or time periods calculated in years, months, weeks or days. A time period may also be specified by indicating an event that will occur in any case.

14. What Are The Calculation Of Time Periods?

1.  A time period shall run from the date or from the day of the occurrence of an event, which determines the beginning of the time period.
2. A time period calculated in years shall expire on the relevant month and date of the last year of the time period.
3. A time period calculated in months shall expire on the respective date of the last month of the time period. If a time period calculated in months terminates in a month, which does not have the respective date, the time period shall expire on the last day of such month.
4. A time period calculated in weeks shall expire on the respective day of the last week of the time period.
5. If the time period expires on a weekly day of rest or a holiday, the subsequent working day shall be deemed to be the last day of the time period.
6. A time period specified up to a specific date shall expire on that date. 
7. If a time period is specified for the completion of an activity, such activity may be completed on the last day of the time period up to 24:00 hours. If such activity is to be completed in an undertaking, the time period shall expire on the hour when the specified working time of the undertaking ends.
8. All written submissions or notifications, which have been delivered to a post office by 24:00 hours on the last day of the time period, shall be considered as having been delivered within the time period. 

15. Explain Content And Form Of Collective Agreements?

•  Parties to a collective agreement shall reach agreement on the provisions regulating the content of employment legal relationships, in particular the organisation of work remuneration and labour protection, establishment and termination of employment legal relationships, raising of qualifications, work procedures, social security of employees and other issues related to employment legal relationships, and shall determine mutual rights and duties.
• Without special arrangements, parties to a collective agreement shall: 
• during the period of the existence of the collective agreement refrain from any measures which are directed at unilateral amendments to its provisions unless provided otherwise by regulatory enactments or by the collective agreement; and
•  ensure that the provisions of the collective agreement are complied with and fulfilled both by the employer and the employees.
• A collective agreement shall be entered into in writing. 

16. Who Are The Parties To A Collective Agreement?

•  A collective agreement in an undertaking shall be entered into by the employer and an employee trade union or by authorised employee representatives if the employees have not formed a trade union.
•  A collective agreement in a sector or territory (hereinafter – general agreement) shall be entered into by an employer, a group of employers, an organisation of employers or an association of organisations of employers, and an employee trade union or an association (union) of employee trade unions if the parties to the general agreement have relevant authorisation or if the right to enter into a general agreement is provided for by the articles of association of such associations (unions).
•  A general agreement entered into by an organisation of employers or an association of organisations of employers shall be binding on members of the organisation or the association of organisations.
• If members of an organisation of employers or an association of organisations of employers employ more than 50 per cent of the employees in a sector, a general agreement entered into between the organisation of employers or association of organisations of employers and an employee trade union or an association (union) of employee trade unions shall be binding on all employers of the relevant sector and shall apply to all employees employed by the employers. With respect to such employers and employees, the general agreement shall come into effect on the day of its publication in the newspaper Latvijas Vēstnesis [the official Gazette of the Government of Latvia] unless the agreement specifies another time for coming into effect. The parties shall publish the general agreement in the newspaper Latvijas Vēstnesis on the basis of a joint application. 

17. What Is The Effect Of Collective Agreements In Time?

• A collective agreement shall be entered into for a specified period of time or for a period of time required for the performance of specific work. A collective agreement shall come into effect on the date it was entered into, unless the collective agreement specifies another time for coming into effect. If a collective agreement does not specify a time of effect, the collective agreement shall be deemed to have been entered into for one year.
• A collective agreement may be terminated before the expiry of its term on the basis of:
• agreement by the parties; or
• notice of termination by one party if such right has been agreed upon in the collective agreement.
• Upon termination of a collective agreement its provisions, with the exception of the duty specified in Section 17, Paragraph two, Clause 1 of this Law, shall apply up to the time of coming into effect of a new collective agreement, unless agreed otherwise by the parties. 

18. What Is The Effect Of A Collective Agreement With Respect To Persons?

Effect of a Collective Agreement with Respect to Persons :

• A collective agreement shall be binding on the parties and its provisions shall apply to all employees who are employed by the relevant employer or in a relevant undertaking of the employer, unless provided for otherwise in the collective agreement. It shall be of no consequence whether employment legal relationships with the employee were established prior to or after the coming into effect of the collective agreement.
• An employee and an employer may derogate from the provisions of a collective agreement only if the relevant provisions of the employment contract are more favourable to the employee. 

19. Explain Familiarisation With A Collective Agreement?

• An employer has a duty to familiarise all employees with the collective agreement not later than within a one-month period from its approval or from the time of amendments made to the provisions of the collective agreement.
• An employer has a duty to make the text of a collective agreement available to every employee. 

20. What Is The Approval Of A Collective Agreement?

•  In order for a collective agreement entered into by an undertaking to be valid, its approval at a general meeting (conference) of employees is required.
• The collective agreement shall be approved by a simple majority vote at a general meeting at which at least half the employees of the relevant undertaking participate.
• If it is impossible to convene a general meeting of employees due to the large number of employees employed by an undertaking or due to the nature of work organisation, the collective agreement shall be approved by a simple majority vote at a conference of employee representatives at which at least half of the employee representatives participate.
• The validity of a general agreement does not require its approval. 

21. What Is The Violation Of The Prohibition Of Differential Treatment When Giving Notice Of Termination Of An Employment Contract During The Probation Period ?

Violation of the Prohibition of Differential Treatment when Giving Notice of Termination of an Employment Contract during the Probation Period :

If an employer when giving a notice of termination of an employment contract during the probation period has violated the prohibition of differential treatment, an employee has the right to bring an action to a court within a one-month period from the date of receipt of a notice of termination from the employer. 

22. What Are The Consequences Of A Probation Period?

Consequences of a Probation Period : 

During the probation period, the employer and the employee have the right to give a notice of termination of the employment contract in writing three-days prior to termination. An employer, when giving the notice of termination of an employment contract during a probation period, does not have a duty to indicate the cause for such notice.

If the contracted term of a probation period has expired and the employee continues to perform the work, it shall be considered that he or she has passed the probation period. 

23. What Is The Specification Of A Probation Period?

Specification of a Probation Period :

 
When entering into an employment contract, a probation period may be specified in order to assess whether an employee is suitable for performance of the work entrusted to him or her. If an employment contract does not specify a probation period, it shall be regarded as entered into without a probation period. A probation period shall not be determined for persons under 18 years of age. 

The term of a probation period may not exceed three months. The said term shall not include a period of temporary incapacity and other periods of time when the employee did not perform work for justified cause. 

24. What Is The Term Of An Employment Contract Entered Into For A Specified Period?

1. The term of an employment contract entered into for a specified period may not exceed three years (including extensions of the term) if another term has not been specified in another law for the employment contract. The entering into a new employment contract with the same employer shall also be regarded as extension of the term of the employment contract if during the period from the date of entering into the former employment contract until the entering into a new employment contract the legal relationship has not been interrupted for more than 30 consecutive days.
2. The term for which an employment contract has been entered into for performing seasonal work (including extensions of the term) may not exceed 10 months within a period of one year.
3. The term of an employment contract entered into in accordance with Section 44, Paragraph one, Clause 3 of this Law may if necessary be extended by exceeding the term referred to in Paragraph one of this Section. If an employee who is absent or suspended from work due to some circumstances does not continue or may not continue employment legal relationships, the employment contract of the employee replacing him or her shall be regarded as entered into for an unspecified period.
4. If, upon expiry of the term for which an employment contract has been entered into, no party has requested termination of the employment contract and employment legal relationships are effectively continuing, the employment contract shall be regarded as entered into for an unspecified period.

25. Explain The Invalidity Of An Employment Contract?

Invalidity of an Employment Contract :  An employment contract that is contrary to regulatory enactments shall be deemed as null and void only for further time periods, and an employer, if he or she was at fault for the entering into of such contract and it is not possible to enter into an employment contract with an employee in conformity with regulatory enactments, has a duty to pay compensation to the employee in the amount of at least six months average earnings.

In case of doubt, the invalidity of a particular provision included in an employment contract shall not affect the validity of the rest of the employment contract. 

26. What Are The Consequences Of Failure To Comply With The Written Form?

 If, when entering into an employment contract, its written form has not been complied with, an employee has the right to request that the employment contract be expressed in writing. For this purpose, an employee may use any evidence pertaining to the existence of employment legal relationships and the content of such relations.

If the employee and the employer, or at least one of the parties, has started to perform the duties contracted for, an employment contract that does not conform to the written form shall have the same legal consequences as an employment contract expressed in writing. 

27. Explain The Prohibition Of Differential Treatment When Establishing Employment Legal Relationships?

Prohibition of Differential Treatment when Establishing Employment Legal Relationships : 
 If when establishing employment legal relationships an employer has violated the prohibition of differential treatment, an applicant has the right to bring an action to a court within a period of one month from the date of receipt of refusal of the employer to establish employment legal relationships with the applicant.

If employment legal relationships have not been established due to the violation of the prohibition of differential treatment, the applicant does not have the right to request the establishment of such relations on a compulsory basis.

28. What Are The Documents Necessary For Preparing An Employment Contract?

Documents Necessary for Preparing an Employment Contract : 
When preparing an employment contract an applicant has a duty:

• to present a personal identification document; and 
• to submit other documents in cases provided for by regulatory enactments.

When preparing an employment contract for the performance of such work as requires special knowledge or skills, an employer has the right to request the applicant to present documents that certify his or her education or occupational preparedness.

29. Explain About Health Examination?

• An employer may request an applicant to undergo a health examination, which would allow verification that the applicant is suitable for performance of the intended work.
• In the opinion regarding the state of health of an applicant, the doctor shall indicate only whether the applicant is suitable for performance of the intended work.
• Expenditures related to the health examination of an applicant shall be covered by the employer, except in cases where the applicant has knowingly provided the employer with false information during a job interview. 

30. What Is The Basis And Scope Of Civil Liability Of Employees?

• If an employee does not perform work without justified cause or performs it improperly, or due to other illegal or culpable action has caused losses to the employer, the employee has a duty to compensate the losses caused to the employer. 
• The employee shall be liable only for the reduction of the present property of the employer, but not for reduction in expected profit.
• If losses to an employer have been caused with malicious intent of the employee or due to his or her illegal, culpable action not related to performance of the contracted work, the employee shall be liable for all losses to the employer.
• An employee whose work is related to an increased risk of losses shall be liable only if losses to the employer have been caused as a result of malicious intent or gross negligence.

1. What Do You Do As A Legal Assistant?

Paralegals and legal assistants perform a variety of tasks to support lawyers, including maintaining and organizing files, conducting legal research, and drafting documents.

2. Explain Business Principles?

Executive officers entrust their assistants with confidential business information, and some executives even confide in their assistants on personal matters that have little to do with business. In some cases, executive assistants are not only the gatekeepers for executive leadership, but they also are confidantes. A tough interview question that probes the interviewee’s business principles and ethics includes, “Suppose you are the assistant to the CEO of one of the most profitable companies in the world. Your boss lets it slip that she’s been wrangling for the acquisition and control of a competitor.

3. Is A Legal Assistant The Same As A Paralegal?

Legal Assistant and Paralegal Certification.If either concentrates on administrative tasks, it is most likely for legal secretaries and not paralegals. However, if conducting legal research or drafting legal documents is mentioned, you can be sure that the school or employer is targeting paralegals.

4. What Exactly Is Legal Assistant?

An LA is the personal assistant to someone who’s on the executive management team of the organisation or who perhaps sits on the board.

5. What Is Legal Assistant?

Employee of a company who supports the executive, CEO, or manager and has ability to make decisions that affect the company. In addition, the executive assistant will also perform similar responsibilities as an administrative assistant, involving research, communications, correspondence, and office management. In some organizations, the executive assistant will attend meetings or conferences in place of the executive.

6. What Are The Duties Of Legal Assistant?

• Managing the day-to-day operations of the office.
• Organizing and maintaining files and records.
• Planning and scheduling meetings and appointments.

7. What Is A Legal Secretary Do?

Legal secretaries work in law offices and perform secretarial tasks that are specific to the law field: writing legal documents, such as summonses, motions, subpoenas, etc., conducting research and reading legal articles, and more, as well as standard secretarial duties, that might include answering phones and email,

8. What Are The Main Components Of A Case File And What Steps Are Carried Out To File A Case?

Case filing is an intricate task, it involves case summarizing, material collection and organization, law research, witness scheduling and team case review reports.

9. What Areas Of Law Are You Most Interested In?

Main interest lies in the forensic field however I am open to all fields

10. What Are The Key Skills You Possess That You Believe Qualify You As A Legal Assistant?

My skills, training and experience in client litigation, law research, legal administration skills and expertise in maintaining functional client relationships render me a suitable candidate for the position

1. What Is Apache Mahout?

Apache™ Mahout is a library of scalable machine-learning algorithms, implemented on top of Apache Hadoop® and using the MapReduce paradigm. Machine learning is a discipline of artificial intelligence focused on enabling machines to learn without being explicitly programmed, and it is commonly used to improve future performance based on previous outcomes.

Once big data is stored on the Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS), Mahout provides the data science tools to automatically find meaningful patterns in those big data sets. The Apache Mahout project aims to make it faster and easier to turn big data into big information.

2. What Does Apache Mahout Do?

Mahout supports four main data science use cases:

• Collaborative filtering – mines user behavior and makes product recommendations (e.g. Amazon recommendations).
• Clustering – takes items in a particular class (such as web pages or newspaper articles) and organizes them into naturally occurring groups, such that items belonging to the same group are similar to each other.
• Classification – learns from existing categorizations and then assigns unclassified items to the best category.
• Frequent item-set mining – analyzes items in a group (e.g. items in a shopping cart or terms in a query session) and then identifies which items typically appear together.

3. What Is The History Of Apache Mahout? When Did It Start?

The Mahout project was started by several people involved in the Apache Lucene (open source search) community with an active interest in machine learning and a desire for robust, well-documented, scalable implementations of common machine-learning algorithms for clustering and categorization. The community was initially driven by Ng et al.’s paper “Map-Reduce for Machine Learning on Multicore” (see Resources) but has since evolved to cover much broader machine-learning approaches. Mahout also aims to:

• Build and support a community of users and contributors such that the code outlives any particular contributor’s involvement or any particular company or university’s funding.
• Focus on real-world, practical use cases as opposed to bleeding-edge research or unproven techniques.
• Provide quality documentation and examples.

4. What Are The Features Of Apache Mahout?

Although relatively young in open source terms, Mahout already has a large amount of functionality, especially in relation to clustering and CF. Mahout’s primary features are:

• Taste CF. Taste is an open source project for CF started by Sean Owen on SourceForge and donated to Mahout in 2008.
• Several Mapreduce enabled clustering implementations, including k-Means, fuzzy k-Means, Canopy, Dirichlet, and Mean-Shift.
• Distributed Naive Bayes and Complementary Naive Bayes classification implementations.
• Distributed fitness function capabilities for evolutionary programming.
• Matrix and vector libraries.
• Examples of all of the above algorithms.

5. How Is It Different From Doing Machine Learning In R Or Sas?

Unless you are highly proficient in Java, the coding itself is a big overhead. There’s no way around it, if you don’t know it already you are going to need to learn Java and it’s not a language that flows! For R users who are used to seeing their thoughts realized immediately the endless declaration and initialization of objects is going to seem like a drag. For that reason I would recommend sticking with R for any kind of data exploration or prototyping and switching to Mahout as you get closer to production.

6. Mention Some Machine Learning Algorithms Exposed By Mahout?

Below is a current list of machine learning algorithms exposed by Mahout.

• Collaborative Filtering

  o Item-based Collaborative Filtering
  o Matrix Factorization with Alternating Least Squares
  o Matrix Factorization with Alternating Least Squares on Implicit Feedback

• Classification

  o Naive Bayes
  o Complementary Naive Bayes
  o Random Forest

• Clustering

  o Canopy Clustering
  o k-Means Clustering
  o Fuzzy k-Means
  o Streaming k-Means
  o Spectral Clustering

• Dimensionality Reduction

  o Lanczos Algorithm
  o Stochastic SVD
  o Principal Component Analysis

• Topic Models

  o Latent Dirichlet Allocation

• Miscellaneous

  o Frequent Pattern Matching
  o RowSimilarityJob
  o ConcatMatrices
  o Colocations

7. What Is The Roadmap For Apache Mahout Version 1.0?

The next major version, Mahout 1.0, will contain major changes to the underlying architecture of Mahout, including:

• Scala: In addition to Java, Mahout users will be able to write jobs using the Scala programming language. Scala makes programming math-intensive applications much easier as compared to Java, so developers will be much more effective.
• Spark & h2o: Mahout 0.9 and below relied on MapReduce as an execution engine. With Mahout 1.0, users can choose to run jobs either on Spark or h2o, resulting in a significant performance increase.

8. What Is The Difference Between Apache Mahout And Apache Spark’s Mllib?

The main difference will came from underlying frameworks. In case of Mahout it is Hadoop MapReduce and in case of MLib it is Spark. To be more specific – from the difference in per job overhead

If Your ML algorithm mapped to the single MR job – main difference will be only startup overhead, which is dozens of seconds for Hadoop MR, and let say 1 second for Spark. So in case of model training it is not that important.

Things will be different if your algorithm is mapped to many jobs. In this case we will have the same difference on overhead per iteration and it can be game changer.

Let’s assume that we need 100 iterations, each needed 5 seconds of cluster CPU.

• On Spark: it will take 100*5 + 100*1 seconds = 600 seconds.
• On Hadoop: MR (Mahout) it will take 100*5+100*30 = 3500 seconds.

In the same time Hadoop MR is much more mature framework then Spark and if you have a lot of data, and stability is paramount – I would consider Mahout as serious alternative.

9. Mention Some Use Cases Of Apache Mahout?

Commercial Use
 

• Adobe AMP uses Mahout’s clustering algorithms to increase video consumption by better user targeting.
• Accenture uses Mahout as typical example for their Hadoop Deployment Comparison Study
• AOL use Mahout for shopping recommendations. See slide deck
• Booz Allen Hamilton uses Mahout’s clustering algorithms. See slide deck
• Buzzlogic uses Mahout’s clustering algorithms to improve ad targeting
• Cull.tv uses modified Mahout algorithms for content recommendations
• DataMine Lab uses Mahout’s recommendation and clustering algorithms to improve our clients’ ad targeting.
• Drupal users Mahout to provide open source content recommendation solutions.
• Evolv uses Mahout for its Workforce Predictive Analytics platform.
• Foursquare uses Mahout for its recommendation engine.
• Idealo uses Mahout’s recommendation engine.
• InfoGlutton uses Mahout’s clustering and classification for various consulting projects.
• Intel ships Mahout as part of their Distribution for Apache Hadoop Software.
• Intela has implementations of Mahout’s recommendation algorithms to select new offers to send tu customers, as well as to recommend potential customers to current offers. We are also working on enhancing our offer categories by using the clustering algorithms.
• iOffer uses Mahout’s Frequent Pattern Mining and Collaborative Filtering to recommend items to users.
• Kauli , one of Japanese Ad network, uses Mahout’s clustering to handle click stream data for predicting audience’s interests and intents.
• Linked.In Historically, we have used R for model training. We have recently started experimenting with Mahout for model training and are excited about it – also see Hadoop World slides .
• LucidWorks Big Data uses Mahout for clustering, duplicate document detection, phrase extraction and classification.
• Mendeley uses Mahout to power Mendeley Suggest, a research article recommendation service.
• Mippin uses Mahout’s collaborative filtering engine to recommend news feeds
• Mobage uses Mahout in their analysis pipeline
• Myrrix is a recommender system product built on Mahout.
• NewsCred uses Mahout to generate clusters of news articles and to surface the important stories of the day
• Next Glass uses Mahout
• Predixion Software uses Mahout’s algorithms to build predictive models on big data
• Radoop provides a drag-n-drop interface for big data analytics, including Mahout clustering and classification algorithms
• ResearchGate, the professional network for scientists and researchers, uses Mahout’s recommendation algorithms.
• Sematext uses Mahout for its recommendation engine
• SpeedDate.com uses Mahout’s collaborative filtering engine to recommend member profiles
• Twitter uses Mahout’s LDA implementation for user interest modeling
• Yahoo! Mail uses Mahout’s Frequent Pattern Set Mining.
• 365Media uses Mahout’s Classification and Collaborative Filtering algorithms in its Real-time system named UPTIME and 365Media/Social. 

Academic Use

• Dicode project uses Mahout’s clustering and classification algorithms on top of HBase.
• The course Large Scale Data Analysis and Data Mining at TU Berlin uses Mahout to teach students about the parallelization of data mining problems with Hadoop and Mapreduce
• Mahout is used at Carnegie Mellon University, as a comparable platform to GraphLab
• The ROBUST project , co-funded by the European Commission, employs Mahout in the large scale analysis of online community data.
• Mahout is used for research and data processing at Nagoya Institute of Technology , in the context of a large-scale citizen participation platform project, funded by the Ministry of Interior of Japan.
• Several researches within Digital Enterprise Research Institute NUI Galway use Mahout for e.g. topic mining and modeling of large corpora.
• Mahout is used in the NoTube EU project.

10. What Are The Different Clustering In Mahout?

Mahout supports several clustering-algorithm implementations, all written in Map-Reduce, each with its own set of goals and criteria:

• Canopy:
  A fast clustering algorithm often used to create initial seeds for other clustering algorithms.
• k-Means (and fuzzy k-Means):
  Clusters items into k clusters based on the distance the items are from the centroid, or center, of the previous iteration.
• Mean-Shift:
  Algorithm that does not require any a priori knowledge about the number of clusters and can produce arbitrarily shaped clusters.
• Dirichlet:
  Clusters based on the mixing of many probabilistic models giving it the advantage

1. How To Find Middle Element Of A Singly Linked List In One Pass?

You should clarify what does mean by one pass in this question. If Interviewer says that you cannot loop twice and you just have to use one loop, then you can use the two pointer approach to solving this problem. In the two pointer approach, you have two pointers, fast and slow. In each step, the fast pointer moves two nodes, while slow pointer just steps one node. So, when fast pointer will point to the last node i.e. where next node is null, the slow pointer will be pointing to the middle node of the linked list.

2. How To Check If Linked List Contains Loop In Java? How To Find The Starting Node Of The Loop?

This is another interesting linked list problem which can be solved using the two pointer approach discussed in the first question. This is also known as tortoise and hare algorithm. Basically, you have two pointers fast and slow and they move with different speed i.e. fast moves 2 notes in each iteration and slow moves one node. If linked list contains cycle then at some point in time, both fast and slow pointer will meet and point to the same node, if this didn’t happen and one of the pointer reaches the end of linked list means linked list doesn’t contain any loop.

3. How To Reverse A Linked List In Java?

This is probably the most popular linked list interview question, which is asked to both junior programmers with 2 to 3 years of experience and senior developers containing 4 to 6 years of experience. Some of you may think this is the simplest of linked list problem but when you actually go doing it, you will be stuck and many places. The simplest approach to solving this problem is by using recursion because linked list is a recursive data structure as shown in the solution article.

4. How To Reverse A Singly Linked List Without Recursion In Java?

The previously linked list interview question becomes even more challenging when the interviewer asked you to solve the problem without recursion. you need to keep reversing links on the node until you reach the end, which will then become new head.

5. How Would You Remove A Node From A Doubly Linked List?

This is one of the frequently asked linked list interview questions, mostly asked freshers and computer science college graduates. In order to remove a node from the doubly linked list, you need to go through that node and then change the links so that it points to the next node. Removing nodes from head and tail is easy in linked list but removing a node from the middle of the linked list requires you to travel to the node hence take O(n) time. If you want to learn more about basic operations on linked list data structure, please read a good book on Data Structure and Algorithms e.g. Introduction to Algorithms by Thomas H. Carmen.

6. Write A Program To Convert A Binary Tree Into A Doubly Linked List?

This problem is opposite of question 25 where you need to write a program to convert a double linked list to the balanced binary tree.  The left and right pointers in nodes of a binary tree will be used as previous and next pointers respectively in converted doubly linked list. The order of nodes in the doubly linked list must be same as Inorder of the given Binary Tree. The first node of Inorder traversal (left most node in the binary tree) must be the head node of the doubly linked list.

7. How To Remove Duplicate Nodes In An Unsorted Linked List?

This problem is similar earlier problems related to String and arrays i.e. removing duplicate elements in an array (see) or removing duplicate characters from given String (see here). You need to write a program to remove all duplicate nodes from an unsorted linked list in Java. For example if the linked list is 22->21->22->31->41->23->21 then your program should convert the list to 22->21->31->41->23. This question is also given in the famous Cracking the Coding Interview book so you can look at their solution as well.

8. How To Find The Length Of A Singly Linked List In Java?

This is one of the easiest linked list questions you can expect in an interview. That’s why it is often asked on telephonic interviews. In order to find the length of linked list, you can iterate over linked list and keep a count of nodes until you reach the end of the linked list where next node will be null. The value of the counter is the length of linked list.

9. Write Code To Print Out The Data Stored In Each Node In A Singly Linked List?

This is another simplest question which just tests whether you know linked list traversal or not. You can get the value from the node by accessing its value property, you just need to traverse through linked list, access each node and print value.

10. Write A Program To Print A Linked List In Reverse Order? E.g. Print Linked List From Tail To Head?

You can print nodes of linked list in reverse order by using Stack data structure in two steps:

Step 1:
Traverse the linked list from the head and put the value of each node into Stack until you reach the last node. This will take O(n) time.

Step 2:
Pop the elements out from the stack and print. This will take O(1) time.

Input:
1->2->3

Output:
3 2 1

11. How To Find The Kith Node From The End In A Singly Linked List?

• This is one of the tricky but frequently asked linked list questions. Some of you may be wondering how do you find kth node from end, singly linked list can only traverse in one direction and that is forward then how do you count nodes from the end.
• Well, you don’t have to, you can still move forward and count nodes from the end? Actually, that’s the trick. You can use two pointers to find the Nth node from the end in a singly linked list. They are known as fast and slow points.
• You start slow pointer when the fast pointer reaches to the Kth node from start e.g. if you have to find 3rdnode from the end then you start slow pointer when the fast pointer reaches to the 3rd node. This way, when your fast pointer reaches to the end, your slow pointer will be on the 3rd node from the end.

12. How To Delete Alternate Nodes Of A Linked List?

You are given a Singly Linked List.  Starting from the second node delete all alternate nodes of it. For example, if the given linked list is 1->4->8->10->15 then your function should convert it to 1->8->15.

13. What Is The Difference Between An Array And Linked List In Java?

This is one of the frequently asked linked list questions on programming job interviews. There is much difference between an array and linked list but the most important is how they are stored into the memory location. Array stores elements at the adjacent memory location, while linked list stores them at scattered, which means searching is easy in an array and difficult in linked list but adding and removing an element from start and end is easy in linked list. See here for more differences between array and linked list.

14. Difference Between Singly And Doubly Linked List In Java?

The key difference between a single and double linked list data structure in java is that singly linked list only contains pointer to next node, which means you can only traverse in one direction i.e. forward, but doubly linked list contains two points, both previous and next nodes, hence you can traverse to both forward and backward direction.

15. How To Implement A Linked List Using Generics In Java?

It’s not easy to implement a linked using generics in Java, especially if have not written any parametric or generic class, but it’s a good exercise to get familiar with both linked list data structure as well generics in Java.

16. How To Insert A Node At The Beginning Of The List?

Inserting a node at the beginning of the list is probably the easiest of all operations. Let’s talk about what is involved here referring to the diagram above. This involves creating a new node (with the new data, say int 10), making its link point to the current first node pointed to by head (data value 2) and lasting changing head to point to this new node. Simple, right.

17. How To Insert A Node At The End Of The List?

This case is a little bit more evolved. If you have a tail pointer, it is as easy as inserting at the beginning of the list. If you do not have a tail pointer, you will have to create the new node, traverse the list till you reach the end (i.e. the next pointer is NULL) and then make that last node’s next pointer point to the new node.

18. How Do You Traverse A Linked List In Java?

There are multiple ways to traverse a linked list in Java e.g. you can use traditional for, while, or do-while loop and go through the linked list until you reach the end of the linked list. Alternatively, you can use enhanced for loop of Java 1.5 or Iterator to traverse through a linked list in Java. From JDK 8 onwards, you can also use java.util.stream.Stream for traversing a linked list.

19. How Do You Find The Sum Of Two Linked List Using Stack In Java?

This is a relatively difficult linked questions when you compare this to reversing a linked list or adding/removing elements from the linked list. In order to calculate the sum of linked list, you calculate the sum of values held at nodes in the same position, for example, you add values at first node on both the linked list to find the first node of resultant linked list. If the length of both linked list is not same then you only add elements from shorter linked list and just copy values for remaining nodes from the long list.

20. How Do You Convert A Sorted Doubly Linked List To A Balanced Binary Search Tree In Java?

This is one of the difficult linked list questions you will find on interviews. You need to write a program to convert a given doubly Linked, which is sorted in ascending order to construct a Balanced Binary Search Tree which has same the values as the given doubly linked list. The challenge is usually increased by putting a restriction to construct the BST in-place i.e. no new node should be allocated for tree conversion)

Input:
A Doubly linked list 10  20 30  40 50  60  70

Output:
A balanced binary search tree BST

         40

      /     

    20      60

   /          /   

 10   30  40   70

21. How Do You Calculate The Sum Of Two Linked List Using Recursion In Java?

This is another interesting linked list based algorithm question for Java programmers. You cannot use the java.util.LinkdList class but you have to write your own linked list implementation in Java to solve this problem.

22. How To Implement Lru Cache In Java Using Linked List?

An LRU cache is the cache where you remove least recently used an element when the cache is full or about to fill. It’s relatively easy in Java if you are allowed to use one of the Collection class e.g. you can use a LinkedHashMap to implement LRU cache in Java, but you should also prepare how you can use a doubly linked list to create an LRU cache.

23. How Do You Reverse Every Alternate K Nodes Of A Linked List In Java?

This is another difficult linked list algorithm question which is mostly asked to experienced programmers e.g. programmer having 3 to 6 years of experience. You have been given a singly linked list and you need to write a function to reverse every alternate k nodes (where k is an input to the function) in an efficient way. You also need to calculate the time and space complexity of your algorithm.

Example:

Inputs:
   1->2->3->4->5->6->7->8->9->NULL and k = 3

Output:
   3->2->1->4->5->6->9->8->7->NULL.

24. How Do Add Two Numbers Represented Using Linked List In Java?

You have given two numbers represented by two linked lists, write a function that returns the sum of these two lists. The sum list is linked list representation of addition of two input numbers. There are two restrictions to solve this problem i.e. you cannot modify the lists and you are not allowed to use explicit extra space. You can use recursion to solve this problem.

Input:

  First List:
1->2->3  // represents number 123

  Second List:
9->9->9 //  represents number 999

Output:

 Resultant list:
1->1->2->2  // represents number 1122

That’s all about some of the frequently asked linked list based coding questions from Programming Interviews. As I said, linked list is one of the essential data structure and you should have a good command over it, especially if you are preparing for Google or Amazon job interview. Once you solve these problems, you can try solving questions given in Algorithm Design Manual by Steven S. Skiena. They are tougher but can really improve your data structure and algorithm skills.

25. What Is A Linked List?

Linked list is an ordered set of data elements, each containing a link to its successor (and typically its predecessor).

26. How Many Pointers Are Required To Implement A Simple Linked List?

You can find generally 3 pointers engaged:

1. A head pointer, pointing to the start of the record.
2. A tail pointer, pointing on the last node of the list. The key property in the last node is that its subsequent pointer points to nothing at all (NULL).
3. A pointer in every node, pointing to the next node element.

27. How Many Types Of Linked Lists Are There?

Singly linked list, doubly linked list, multiply linked list, Circular Linked list.

28. How To Represent A Linked List Node?

The simplest representation of a linked list node is wrapping the data and the link using a typedef structure and giving the structure as a Node pointer that points to the next node. An example representation in C is

/*ll stands for linked list*/

typedef struct ll

{

    int data;

    struct ll *next;

} Node;

29. Describe The Steps To Insert Data At The Starting Of A Singly Linked List?

Inserting data at the beginning of the linked list involves creation of a new node, inserting the new node by assigning the head pointer to the new node next pointer and updating the head pointer to the point the new node. Consider inserting a temp node to the first of list

Node *head;

void InsertNodeAtFront(int data)

{

    /* 1. create the new node*/

    Node *temp = new Node;

    temp->data = data;

    /* 2. insert it at the first position*/

    temp->next = head;

    /* 3. update the head to point to this new node*/

    head = temp;

}

30. How To Insert A Node At The End Of Linked List?

This case is a little bit more complicated. It depends on your implementation. If you have a tail pointer, it’s simple. In case you do not have a tail pointer, you will have to traverse the list till you reach the end (i.e. the next pointer is NULL), then create a new node and make that last node’s next pointer point to the new node.

void InsertNodeAtEnd(int data)

{

   /* 1. create the new node*/

    Node *temp = new Node;

   temp->data = data;

    temp->next = NULL;

    /* check if the list is empty*/

    if (head == NULL)

    {

        head = temp;

        return;

    }

    else

    {

        /* 2. traverse the list till the end */

        Node *traveller = head;

        while (traveler->next != NULL)

            traveler = traveler->next;

       /* 3. update the last node to point to this new node */

        traveler->next = temp;

    }

}

31. How To Insert A Node In Random Location In The List?

As above, you’d initial produce the new node. Currently if the position is one or the list is empty, you’d insert it initially position. Otherwise, you’d traverse the list until either you reach the specified position or the list ends. Then you’d insert this new node. Inserting within the middle is that the difficult case as you have got to make sure you do the pointer assignment within the correct order. First, you’d set the new nodes next pointer to the node before that the new node is being inserted. Then you’d set the node to the position to purpose to the new node. Review the code below to get an idea.

void InsertNode(int data, int position)

{

    /* 1. create the new node */

    Node *temp = new Node;

    temp->data = data;

    temp->next = NULL;

    /* check if the position to insert is first or the list is empty */

    if ((position == 1) || (head == NULL))

    {

        // set the new node to point to head

        // as the list may not be empty

        temp->next = head;

        // point head to the first node now

        head = temp;

        return;

    }

    else

    {

        /* 2. traverse to the desired position */

    Node *t = head;

int currPos = 2;

        while ((currPos < position) && (t->next != NULL))

        {

            t = t->next;

            currPos++;

        }

        /* 3. now we are at the desired location */

        /* 4 first set the pointer for the new node */

        temp->next = t->next;

        /* 5 now set the previous node pointer */

        t->next = temp;

    }

}

32. How To Delete A Node From Linked List?

• The following are the steps to delete node from the list at the specified position.
• Set the head to point to the node that head is pointing to.
• Traverse to the desired position or till the list ends; whichever comes first
• You have to point the previous node to the next node.

33. How To Reverse A Singly Linked List?

• First, set a pointer (*current) to point to the first node i.e. current=head.
• Move ahead until current!=null (till the end)
• set another pointer (*next) to point to the next node i.e. next=current->next
• store reference of *next in a temporary variable (*result) i.e. current->next=result
• swap the result value with current i.e. result=current
• And now swap the current value with next. i.e. current=next
• return result and repeat from step 2
• A linked list can also be reversed using recursion which eliminates the use of a temporary variable.

34. Compare Linked Lists And Dynamic Arrays?

• A dynamic array is a data structure that allocates all elements contiguously in memory, and keeps a count of the present number of elements. If the area reserved for the dynamic array is exceeded, it’s reallocated and traced, a costly operation.
• Linked lists have many benefits over dynamic arrays. Insertion or deletion of an element at a specific point of a list, is a constant-time operation, whereas insertion in a dynamic array at random locations would require moving half the elements on the average, and all the elements in the worst case.
• Whereas one can delete an element from an array in constant time by somehow marking its slot as vacant, this causes fragmentation that impedes the performance of iteration.

35. What Is A Circular Linked List?

In the last node of a singly linear list, the link field often contains a null reference. A less common convention is to make the last node to point to the first node of the list; in this case the list is said to be ‘circular’ or ‘circularly linked’.

36. What Is The Difference Between Singly And Doubly Linked Lists?

A doubly linked list whose nodes contain three fields: an integer value and two links to other nodes one to point to the previous node and other to point to the next node. Whereas a singly linked list contains points only to the next node.

37. What Are The Applications That Use Linked Lists?

Both stacks and queues are often implemented using linked lists, other applications are skip list, binary tree, unrolled linked list, hash table, heap, self-organizing list.

38. How To Remove Loops In A Linked List (or) What Are Fast And Slow Pointers Used For?

The best solution runs in O(N) time and uses O(1) space. This method uses two pointers (one slow pointer and one fast pointer). The slow pointer traverses one node at a time, while the fast pointer traverses twice as fast as the first one. If the linked list has loop in it, eventually the fast and slow pointer will be at the same node. On the other hand, if the list has no loop, obviously the fast pointer will reach the end of list before the slow pointer does. Hence we detect a loop.

39. What Will You Prefer To Use A Singly Or A Doubly Linked Lists For Traversing Through A List Of Elements?

Double-linked lists require more space per node than singly liked lists, and their elementary operations such as insertion, deletion are more expensive; but they are often easier to manipulate because they allow fast and easy sequential access to the list in both directions. On the other hand, doubly linked lists cannot be used as persistent data structures. So, for traversing through a list of node, doubly linked list would be a better choice.

1. What Scales Are Used For Magnitude? For Intensity?

• Seismic scales
• Environmental Seismic Intensity scale (ESI)
• European Macroseismic Scale (EMS)
• Liedu.
• Medvedev–Sponheuer–Karnik (MSK)
• Modified Mercalli (MM)
• PHIVOLCS Earthquake Intensity Scale (PEIS)
• Shindo.

2. How Does The Richter Scale?

The Richter magnitude scale was developed in 1935 by Charles F. Richter of the California Institute of Technology as a mathematical device to compare the size of earthquakes. The magnitude of an earthquake is determined from the logarithm of the amplitude of waves recorded by seismographs.

3. What Is The Difference Between Magnitude And Intensity?

Intensity:
The severity of earthquake shaking is assessed using a descriptive scale – the Modified Mercalli Intensity Scale.

Magnitude:
Earthquake size is a quantitative measure of the size of the earthquake at its source. The Richter Magnitude Scale measures the amount of seismic energy released by an earthquake.

When an earthquake occurs, its magnitude can be given a single numerical value on the Richter Magnitude Scale. However the intensity is variable over the area affected by the earthquake, with high intensities near the epicentre and lower values further away. These are allocated a value depending on the effects of the shaking according to the Modified Mercalli Intensity Scale.

4. What Is The Richter Magnitude Scale?

The Richter magnitude scale (also Richter scale) assigns a magnitude number to quantify the size of an earthquake. The Richter scale, developed in the 1930s, is a base-10 logarithmic scale, which defines magnitude as the logarithm of the ratio of the amplitude of the seismic waves to an arbitrary, minor amplitude.

5. What Is The Magnitude And Intensity Of An Earthquake?

The intensity is a number (written as a Roman numeral) describing the severity of an earthquake in terms of its effects on the earth’s surface and on humans and their structures. Several scales exist, but the ones most commonly used in the United States are the Modified Mercalli scale and the Rossi-Forel scale.

6. What Is The Magnitude Of An Earthquake?

Magnitude is a measure of the amount of energy released during an earthquake. It may be expressed using several magnitude scales. One of these, Used in Southern California, is called the Richter scale.

7. What Are The Costs Of Geophysics?

Cost is, of course, a key consideration. Most Environmental and Engineering Geophysical surveys have a cost structure that is similar to that of any licensed professional: an hourly consulting fee plus equipment rental costs. In addition, there are associated costs of mobilization (since most geophysical surveys require acquisition of data in the field), instrumentation amortization, data processing and interpretation, and report writing and presentation.

Ultimately, the application of geophysics must be assessed in terms of its projected costs and benefits as indicated above. EEGS professionals are trained to advise in developing cost and benefit assessments. It makes no sense to conduct a geophysical survey if the costs are projected to exceed any possible economic gains, or to exceed the project’s operational budget. In general, however, geophysical surveys are almost always substantially less expensive than traditional non-technical means of investigation such as excavation or drilling.

8. How Are Geophysical Methods Applied In Practice?

The implementation of geophysical methods is a structured process that consists of a number of key steps, including:

Initial evaluation of the problem at hand (i.e. what is the suspected problem, what initial information is known about the site, what additional information is required, and what are the desired outcomes)

Determination of which geophysical method (or combination of methods) will yield the optimal results. Not all methods will be applicable as noted in some of the links above, therefore, it is critical to carefully assess which methods are most likely to provide data and information relevant to the problem of interest. Also, while some methods may provide information, they may not be cost-effective in a particular context.

Identification of the scope (or size) of the required geophysical coverage.

Assessment of the way in which the data and information are to be acquired, interpreted and presented so as to address the issue at hand.

After these basic questions have been answered and the project approved, the geophysical work will commence.

Typically, Environmental and Engineering Geophysics consists of field surveys conducted along oriented lines (i.e. survey grids) over the desired area of interest. For more information on field surveying, you may want to refer to the links provided above in the “What Geophysical Field Methods are Available” section.

9. What Geophysical Methods Are Available?

Horizontal loop electromagnetic apparatus is used to locate conductive zones that may be leachate plumes. As noted previously, geophysical methods as applied to Environmental and Engineering Geophysics were derived from other principal areas of subsurface investigation, including petroleum, mineral and groundwater exploration. 

The methods or techniques most commonly employed by practitioners include:

• Electromagnetics.
• Gravity.
• Ground penetrating radar (GPR).
• Magnetics.
• Resistivity (and / or induced polarization).
• Seismic refraction (and / or near surface seismic reflection).
• Spontaneous potential (or “SP”).
• Induced polarization (or “IP”).

10. What Are The Benefits Of Geophysics?

Data from very low frequency electromagnetics have been converted to electrical current density and depth. The dark blue color indicates the core of a leachate plume emanating from a landfill. Environmental and Engineering Geophysics offers a unique window into the earth as a means of detecting sub-surface conditions, and its relevancy lies in the concrete and cost-effective benefits it delivers. These include:

Non-destructive :
 It is ideal for use in populated areas, such as cities, where many of today’s environmental and engineering issues arise. It also means an archeological site can be examined without destroying it in the process.

Efficiency :
 It provides a means of evaluating large areas of the subsurface rapidly.

Comprehensiveness : 
Combinations of methods (i.e. multi-disciplinary methods) provide the means of applying different techniques to solve complex problems. The more physical properties that are evaluated, the less ambiguous the interpretation becomes.

Cost-effective :
 Geophysics does not require excavation or direct access to subsurface (except in the case of borehole methods where access is typically by drilled holes). This means vast volumes of earth can be evaluated at far less cost than excavation or even grid-drilling methods.

Proven : 
The majority of techniques have been in existence for more than a half-century and are mature, yet still relatively undiscovered and underutilized by decision-makers who face complex environmental and engineering problems.

11. What Are The Types Of Problems Addressed?

The sledge hammer provides a source of energy for determination of the depth to water table and bedrock. Generally, environmental and engineering problems fall into the following classes or types:

• Infrastructure (highways and bridges)
• Groundwater (exploration and contaminant mapping)
• Geohazards (earthquake mitigation and collapse structure mapping)
• Urban (utility mapping, underground storage tank location)
• Geologic Mapping
• Archeology
• Forensics (i.e., illegal burials, etc.)
• Civil Engineering / Non-Destructive Testing (NDT)
• So-called “Brownfield” and Landfill Investigations
• Unexploded Ordnance (UXO detection and characterization)
• Dam Safety

12. What Is Geophysics?

The subsurface site characterization of the geology, geological structure, groundwater, contamination, and human artifacts beneath the Earth’s surface, based on the lateral and vertical mapping of physical property variations that are remotely sensed using non-invasive technologies. Many of these technologies are traditionally used for exploration of economic materials such as groundwater, metals, and hydrocarbons.

13. Give A Formula Which Relates Wavelength And Frequency?

The equation that relates wavelength and frequency for electromagnetic waves is: λν=c where λ is the wavelength, ν is the frequency and c is the speed of light.

14. Where Do The Shallow Earthquakes Occur?

Most earthquakes are a result of fault movement in the crust, a relatively thin layer on the Earth’s surface. In Cascadia, most earthquakes are shallow quakes that occur within the crust of the North America plate to a depth of about 20 miles (35 km).

15. What Causes A Deep Focus Earthquake?

A deep-focus earthquake in seismology is an earthquake with a hypocenter depth exceeding 300 km. They occur almost exclusively at oceanic-continental convergent boundaries in association with subducted oceanic lithosphere.

16. What Causes Earthquakes?

Earthquakes are usually caused when rock underground suddenly breaks along a fault. This sudden release of energy causes the seismic waves that make the ground shake. When two blocks of rock or two plates are rubbing against each other, they stick a little.

17. What Is Meant By A Diurnal Cycle?

A diurnal cycle is any pattern that recurs every 24 hours as a result of one full rotation of the Earth with respect to the Sun. In climatology, the diurnal cycle is one of the most basic forms of climate patterns. The most familiar such pattern is the diurnal temperature variation.

18. What Are Diurnal Changes?

Diurnal temperature variation is the variation between a high temperature and a low temperature that occurs during the same day.

19. What Are Magnetic Storms?

A disturbance of the magnetic field of the earth (or other celestial body).

20. What Causes The Earth’s Oblateness?

The Earth’s oblateness, shown here as a bulge at the equator (highly exaggerated to demonstrate the concept) causes a twisting force on satellite orbits that change various orbital elements over time. The force caused by the equatorial bulge is still gravity.

21. Define Declination, Inclination.

Magnetic declination is the angle between magnetic north (the direction the north end of a compass needle points) and true north. The declination is positive when the magnetic north is east of true north. Magnetic inclination is the angle made by a compass needle when the compass is held in a vertical orientation.

22. Define Curie Temperature.

The Curie temperature (TC), or Curie point, is the temperature at which certain materials lose their permanent magnetic properties, to be replaced by induced magnetism.

23. What Is A Tomographic Image?

Tomography refers to imaging by sections or sectioning, through the use of any kind of penetrating wave. The method is used in radiology, archaeology, biology, atmospheric science, geophysics, oceanography, plasma physics, materials science, astrophysics, quantum information, and other sciences.

24. What Part Of The Earth Does Not Receive Direct P Waves From A Quake?

The shadow zone is the area of the earth from angular distances of 104 to 140 degrees from a given earthquake that does not receive any direct P waves. The shadow zone results from S waves being stopped entirely by the liquid core and P waves being bent (refracted) by the liquid core.

25. What Is Seismic Imaging?

Seismic imaging is a tool that bounces sound waves off underground rock structures to reveal possible crude oil– and natural gas–bearing formations. Seismologists use ultrasensitive devices called geophones to record the sound waves as they echo within the earth.

26. What Is A Harmonic Tremor?

A harmonic tremor is a sustained release of seismic and infrasonic energy typically associated with the underground movement of magma, the venting of volcanic gases from magma, or both.

27. What Is Seismic Tomography?

Seismic tomography is a technique for imaging the subsurface of the Earth with seismic waves produced by earthquakes or explosions. P-, S-, and surface waves can be used for tomographic models of different resolutions based on seismic wavelength, wave source distance, and the seismograph array coverage.

28. What Are Sv And Sh Waves?

S-waves polarized in the horizontal plane are classified as SH-waves. If polarized in the vertical plane, they are classified as SV-waves. When an S- or P-wave strikes an interface at an angle other than 90 degrees, a phenomenon known as mode conversion occurs.

29. What Is A Seismograph And How Does It Function?

A seismograph is the device that scientists use to measure earthquakes. The goal of a seismograph is to accurately record the motion of the ground during a quake.

30. How Does A Seismograph Works?

Seismographs can detect quakes that are too small for humans to feel. During an earthquake, ground-shaking seismic waves radiate outward from the quake source, called the epicenter. Different types of seismic waves travel at different speeds and through different parts of the Earth during a quake.

31. Distinguish Between A Seismograph And A Seismogram?

A seismogram is a visual record that is created by a seismograph. A seismograph is a piece of equipment that records earthquake movements. These two items go hand in hand and are essential for the study of earthquakes.

1. What Is A Portlet? Explain Its Capabilities.

Portlets are UI components that are pluggable and are managed, displayed in a web portal. Markup code fragments are produced by the portlets which are aggregated into a portal page.

A portlet resembles an application that is web based and is hosted in a portal. Email, discussion forums, news, blogs, weather reports are some of the examples of portlets.

2. What Is Horizontal Portals?

These are the portals are of type general interest. Yahoo!,Lycos,AOL,Freeserve,Sympatico are examples of horizontal portals.

3. Explain The Concepts And Capabilities Of Portal Structure Markup Language, Psml?

PSML was created to allow abstraction and content structure within Jetspeed. It has two markups:

1. Registry markup
   : Describes the availability of resources to the Jetspeed engine. It supports multiple portlet registries.
2. Site markup
   : The availability of portlets are described by this markup, which is displayed for a given user.

4. Explain Portal Architecture?

The core implementation of the portal is UI, hosted by a Portal server. The HTTP requests, HTML responses, and returning appropriate portal pages are handled by the Portal UI. Enterprise Web application also can be handled by the Portal Server.

The portal architecture has the following:

• Automaton Server:
  This server performs the management of job scheduling and implementation of a portal. It accesses all remote crawlers and profile services retrieved and stored from a remote database.
• Image Server:
  This server hosts images and other web page content used by web services and a portal. With this configuration, large static files are to be sent directly to the browser without portal server impacts.
• Search Server:
  This server indexes and searches all the information, applications, communities, documents, web sites through portal.
• Collaboration Server:
  Web content publication and management for portals and web applications are supported by this server. Its functionality can be accessed by a remote web services through Enterprise Web Development kit.
• Content Server:
  Publication and management of web content for portals and web applications along with form based publishing, branding, templates, content expiration is allowed by this server.
• Authentication Server:
  This server handles the portal authentication for users and remote services can be accessed through EDK.
• Remote Servers:
  Web services written using the EDK are hosted by remote servers. The servers can be in different countries, on different platforms and domains.

5. What Is Vertical Portals?

They provide a gateway to the information pertaining to a specific industry such as insurance, banking, finance, automobile, telecom etc.

6. What Are Jboss Portal Server Features?

• Highly integrated web applications’ costs reduce by portals. JBoss enables the reusability of branding and deploying new applications of composite nature.
• The users and the industry can be customized, personalized their experiences in a secure and well governed manner by using JBoss portal.
• JBoss incorporate components into a portal as reusable and standardized portlets, as Jboss is platform independent.
• Performance and scalability is ensured.

7. What Is Content Server In Portal Architecture?

Publication and management of web content for portals and web applications along with form based publishing, branding, templates, content expiration is allowed by this server.

8. What Is Portletsession Interface?

User identification across many requests and transient information storage about the user is processed by PortletSession interace. One PortletSession is created per portlet application per client.

The PortletSession interface provides a way to identify a user across more than one request and to store transient information about that user.

The storing of information is defined in two scopes- APPLICATION_SCOPE and PORTLET_SCOPE.

APPLICATION_SCOPE: All the objects in the session are available to all portlets,servlets, JSPs of the same portlet application, by using APPLICATION_SCOPE.

PORTLET_SCOPE: All the objects in the session are available to the portlet during the requests for the same portlet window. The attributes persisted in the PORTLET_SCOPE are not protected from other web components.

9. What Is B2b Portals?

The enterprises extend to suppliers and partners by using B2B portals.

10. Explain About B2e Portals?

The enterprise knowledge base integration and related applications into user customizable environment is done with B2E portals. This environment is like one stop shop.

11. What Is Collaboration Server In Portal Architecture?

Web content publication and management for portals and web applications are supported by this server. Its functionality can be accessed by a remote web services through Enterprise Web Development kit.

12. What Is Portletcontext Interface?

The portlet view of the portlet container is defined by PortletContext. It allows the availability of resources to the portlet. Using this context, the portlet log can be accessed and URL references to resources can be obtained. There is always only one context per portlet application per JVM.

13. What Is B2e Portals?

The enterprise knowledge base integration and related applications into user customizable environment is done with B2E portals. This environment is like one stop shop.

14. Why Portals?

The following are the reasons to use portals:

• Unified way of presenting information from diverse sources.
• Services like email, news, infotainment, stock prices and other features are offered by portals.
• Provides consistent look and feel for enterprise. Eg. MSN, Google sites.

15. What Is Search Server In Portal Architecture?

This server indexes and searches all the information, applications, communities, documents, web sites through portal.

16. Explain The Types Of Portals, Function-based Portals And User-based Portals?

Function-based portals

• Horizontal Portals: 
  These are the portals are of type general interest. Yahoo!,Lycos,AOL,Freeserve,Sympatico are examples of horizontal portals.
• Vertical Portals: 
  They provide a gateway to the information pertaining to a specific industry such as insurance, banking, finance, automobile, telecom etc.

User-Based Portals

• B2B Portals : 
  The enterprises extend to suppliers and partners by using B2B portals.
• B2C Portals : 
  The enterprises extend to customers for ordering, billing, services by using B2C portals.
• B2E Portals : 
  The enterprise knowledge base integration and related applications into user customizable environment is done with B2E portals. This environment is like one stop shop.

17. What Is B2c Portals?

The enterprises extend to customers for ordering, billing, services by using B2C portals.

18. What Is Image Server In Portal Architecture?

This server hosts images and other web page content used by web services and a portal. With this configuration, large static files are to be sent directly to the browser without portal server impacts.

19. Do You Know What Is Portletcontext Interface?

The portlet view of the portlet container is defined by PortletContext. It allows the availability of resources to the portlet. Using this context, the portlet log can be accessed and URL references to resources can be obtained. There is always only one context per portlet application per JVM.

20. What Is Automaton Server In Portal Architecture?

This server performs the management of job scheduling and implementation of a portal. It accesses all remote crawlers and profile services retrieved and stored from a remote database.

21. What Is The Concepts And Capabilities Of Portal Structure Markup Language, Psml?

PSML was created to allow abstraction and content structure within Jetspeed.

It has two markups:

• Registry markup: Describes the availability of resources to the Jetspeed engine. It supports multiple portlet registries.
• Site markup: The availability of portlets are described by this markup, which is displayed for a given user.

22. Can You Explain Why We Use Portals?

The following are the reasons to use portals:

• Unified way of presenting information from diverse sources.
• Services like email, news, infotainment, stock prices and other features are offered by portals.
• Provides consistent look and feel for enterprise. Eg. MSN, Google sites.