Piracy

Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence at sea. Those who engage in acts of piracy are called pirates. The earliest documented instances of piracy were in the 14th century BC, when the Sea Peoples, a group of ocean raiders, attacked the ships of the Aegean and Mediterranean civilizations. Narrow channels which funnel shipping into predictable routes have long created opportunities for piracy, as well as for privateering and commerce raiding. Privateering uses similar methods to piracy, but the captain acts under orders of the state authorizing the capture of merchant ships belonging to an enemy nation, making it a legitimate form of war-like activity by non-state actors.(For a land-based parallel, compare the association of bandits and brigands with mountain passes.) Historic examples include the waters of Gibraltar, the Strait of Malacca, Madagascar, the Gulf of Aden, and the English Channel, whose geographic strictures facilitated pirate attacks.

Group

Group may refer to:

Groups of people

In science and technology

In mathematics

In chemistry

In computing and the internet

Other uses in science and technology

Other uses

Shot grouping

In shooting, a shot grouping, or simply grouping, is the placement of multiple shots on a target, the shots taken in one shooting session. The closeness of the grouping, the nearness of all the shots to each other, is a measure of the accuracy of a weapon, and a measure of the shooter's consistency and skill.

Uses of the term

For firearms that shoot one round at a time, a shot grouping can be used to measure the accuracy of the system comprised out of weapon as well as the precision and uniformity of the ammunition by fixing the weapon into position on a test mount, and aiming it at a target. Multiple shots using rounds from same type and batch are fired to observe how the weapon groups the shots. If a person holds the weapon and shoots it, the grouping measures the combination of the person's skill and the weapon's accuracy.

In shotgun shooting, the grouping is also called the pattern. The pattern is the spread of shot from a single shotgun shell, measured as the smallest circle containing all the shots on the target. The barrel of a shotgun is designed to deliver a wide or narrow grouping, depending on the expected use. Shooting at close range indicates a cylinder bore barrel to deliver a wide grouping, while for hunting at longer distances such as 50 yards or meters, a choke is recommended for a tighter grouping.

1994 Group

The 1994 Group was a coalition of smaller research-intensive universities in the United Kingdom, founded in 1994 to defend these universities' interests following the creation of the Russell Group by larger research-intensive universities earlier that year. The 1994 Group originally represented seventeen universities, rising to nineteen, and then dropping to eleven. The Group started to falter in 2012, when a number of high performing members left to join the Russell Group. The 1994 Group ultimately dissolved in November 2013.

Role

The group sought "to represent the views of its members on the current state and the future of higher education through discussions with the government, funding bodies, and other higher education interest groups" and "[made] its views known through its research publications and in the media".

University Alliance, million+, GuildHE and the Russell Group were its fellow university membership groups across the UK higher education sector.

Members

1994 Group position in league tables