Looking
at this from an accounting perspective, which Im assuming you mean as this is listed under the
€˜ topic and you speak of balance sheets, we can see distinct differences between investment and
capital as follows:
Investment
Investment is short-term and long-term invests to increase the wealth of an
organization and put its finances and other resources to work. In this way, these resources,
financial and otherwise, produce for the organization, instead of sitting in a basic cash
account and possibly earning significantly less interest.
Investing includes
the purchasing and selling of resources. These resources can be used by a company to sell its
products and/or services. A companys finances fund the assets and the expectation is that these
assets will produce benefits for the company down the road.
As the textbook
€˜Fundamental Accounting Principles (Ninth Canadian Edition; Larson, Wild, Chiappetta, Nelson,
Carroll, Zin; McGraw-Hill Ryerson €“ 1999) states, Investing activities include the
(a) purchase and sale of long-term assets, (b) the purchase and sale of short-term investments
that are not cash equivalents, and (c) lending and collecting on loans other than those made by
a financial institution.
Think of investing on a personal plane.
You invest for yourself and your family to increase your resources, especially your cash
position. You may invest in stocks, government bonds (provincial, state, federal), GICs
(Guaranteed Investment Certificates), corporate bonds and the like. You, like businesses, are
looking to also increase wealth - the wealth of you and your family.
Capital
Capital is indeed the source of
funds as noted above. You need capital to engage in investing activities. From an accounting
perspective, an organizations capital structure is its sources of financing. You can learn a lot
about the solvency of an entity by looking at its capital structure. This includes equity
capital and short-term financing. Equity is an owners or a group of owners claim on the
businesss assets.
As you consider Investments that we talked about above,
recognize that owners equity grows by and an owners investments and
revenues. Now, on the left side of the balance sheet capital is also cash, as an example, a
financial asset. Moreover, capital assets of a company are looked at by lenders as security for
loans they make to a business.
On an organizations balance sheet capital
assets include plant & equipment, factories, buildings, as well as land which are all
long-term tangible assets. Capital assets additionally include intangible assets. Intangible
assets include copyrights, patents, goodwill, trade names and trade names. These assets do not
have a physical presence, but they are used to sell products and services.
The thing with capital assets is that a company expects to realize benefits from them
for greater than one period. Also consider capital expenditures €“ the additional cost of
capital assets.
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The
impact of human activities can be noticed everywhere, including in the evolution of species. It
is surprising to note that even among human beings, evolution is still going on, and we are also
driving the evolution among a large number of species.
Evolution is a natural
process that allows organisms with specific traits (or characteristics) to outcompete their
compatriots. This may happen over a number of life cycles. These specific traits allow organisms
to survive better than those without these traits.
Some examples of
anthropogenic activities that shape the evolution of organisms include pollution,
industrialization, eutrophication, climate change, invasion of invasive species, domestication
of species, habitat fragmentation, hunting, fishing, and so on.
Human beings
have favored particular organisms for their specific characteristics and this has resulted in
evolutionary changes. Commercial fishing, for example, is based on capturing large fishes. This
has caused some fish species to become smaller while the others have started reaching maturity
at a younger age and smaller size.
Another example of human interference in
evolution is the color of peppered moths. In the 1800s, industrialization resulted in the
pollution covering tree trunks. This caused the light-colored peppered moths to stand out easily
for the predators. The result was a drastic reduction in the population of light-colored
peppered moths. When the pollution was cleaned up in the 1970s, the population of peppered moths
shifted back towards the light-colored moths, since the dark-colored moths now became easy prey
for the predators.
Antibiotic resistance among various pathogens and
insecticide resistance among mice are other examples of evolution being driven by human
activities.
Evolutionary changes are still taking place among human beings.
An example is the field of medical sciences. The availability of good medical care has resulted
in low levels of certain diseases in some parts of the world. In other regions, the evolutionary
changes are still taking place in the human population in response to diseases such as malaria
and Lassa fever. People living in regions of high altitude have evolved to survive in those
places. An example is the genetic changes in the people of Tibet, which allows them a higher
blood oxygen level, thus enabling better survival in higher altitudes.
Hope
this helps.
Well, by
itself, it isn't much of a symbol. By itself, all it symbolizes (or, more simply, represents) is
how traces of the past before the Party...
